Exercise in Translation
by LStarrunner
Summary: Bumblebee went to a SciFi Con as a man in a costume :Ch1, Autobots are Browncoats: & made friends with a young woman. Ch3 NOW UP: development of that relationship continues in person after six months. MorMA.G1.Xenosexuality.Ch1DETAILED.Robot:Human.
1. Exercise in Translation

Exercise in Translation

Rating: NC-17, detailed physical intimacy. DETAILED. You have been warned.

Pairing: Cybertronian Mech/Earthly Woman. Jazz/Prowl implied.

Disclaimer: Only the character Mitzi York is original. References to real humans are all celebrities whom this author wishes were more well-known. Transformers belong to corporations, not me.

Note: In this universe, Transformers are real, not a comic, cartoon or movie. Their back-story is the G1 cartoon up to but not including TFTM with one change: assumes the governments and media of the world quickly tired of dealing openly with the 'Bots and proceeded to treat sightings of Transformers the same way they treat other alien sightings, with denial and ridicule. "Keeps them from compromising our security," Red Alert would say. _Firefly_ was a TV show in 2002 that resulted in a movie called _Serenity_ in 2005. Comic and Sci-fi Conventions happen regularly and sometimes the crew of Serenity makes an appearance.

-:-radio transmission-:-

* * *

"What are you supposed to be, anyway?" a rich voice asked from behind him in the Serenity cast autograph line.

Bumblebee had a disorienting moment where he really couldn't call up an answer from his processor. Some of the story Jazz cooked up for him presented itself. "Ummm, Go-Bot?" He turned to look at the human.

"Which one?" she said, looking him up and down.

"Taxi-Bot," he replied, taking in her Browncoat gear. She was striking in her own right: just under 6 feet tall, athletic, shapely. A real beauty. The Zoe costume of tight khaki pants, trim maroon shirt, and leather vest set her off nicely. "You look great, Zoe!"

"Thanks!" she said as she looked him over curiously. "Wow, you put a lot of work into this. Impressive. Shouldn't Taxi-Bot have some checkered thing on his chest though instead of this?" she waved at his Autobot insignia. "Haven't seen anything from that cartoon in ages. Still, you look good. Is this actually metal?" She sounded genuinely curious and even appreciative, touching his chestplate lightly. She checked him out thoroughly.

Bumblebee felt self-conscious but pleased by her attention. He'd drawn a few other looks and even compliments since he arrived, but this was different somehow. Not dismissive. She seemed to like what she saw. "Yes, it is. It's part of my armor," he said, then thought he shouldn't have. He dropped his optics to the floor.

She whistled softly. "That's dedication. I'm impressed. Me? I found the vest on-line and the rest in random shops around town. Nothing custom."

The line in front of them moved a bit. They shuffled along with it. Bumblebee thought he could feel her looking at him again, so he turned around.

"I'm Mitzi," she volunteered, offering her right hand in that gesture of greeting he'd seen humans use and looking up to his optics, "Mitzi York."

Bumblebee gently took her hand in his, remembering to use the right one this time, and moved it up and down slightly. "I'm Bumblebee." He smiled.

She smiled back. "Oh, I've read some of your posts on Fireflyfans! You're _that_ Bumblebee, right? I just can't imagine that's a very common username. I'm ZoeSister." Her smile broadened.

Bumblebee felt encouraged. He wasn't often in a position to appreciate the attention of a pretty girl. That was Spike's job. As the line moved, they talked about their experiences as Browncoats: how they got hooked on the 'verse, their favorite scenes, their favorite characters...

"So, why didn't you come as Jayne? Jayne costumes are easy: old tee shirt, cargo pants, heavy boots..." She paused but he didn't answer immediately, so she continued, "You talk about being in the army in some of your posts, you could've used parts of old uniforms if you wanted."

Bumblebee's CPU raced. Surely he'd learned _something_ about interaction from the human media over the years. What might a young man say who wanted to keep this warrior-woman's attention and not talk details of his service... "But then I'd look like everybody else and you wouldn't have looked at me twice."

She smiled and looked away, patted his forearm. "Can't deny that, I suppose."

They were next in line. Bumblebee's costume drew compliments and questions from each of the cast and a couple of 'wrong fandoms' from jealous people immediately behind them. Bumblebee didn't care: he was the only Autobot small enough to pass for a large man in a larger suit and second only to Jazz in his love of the 'verse. Jazz had gotten not only Bumblebee, Blaster and Cosmos hooked on the show when it aired, but even Prowl, Ironhide and Prime. They decided the Browncoats were fighting for the same thing the Autobots were: freedom to choose their own lives. Freedom they hadn't had since the Decepticons started to literally steal power for themselves, trying to control all the energon on Cybertron. So, Bumblebee had a list of specific autographs to get for the others: Summer Glau for Cosmos and Blaster who felt she was the voice of their favorite ship, Jewel Stait for Ironhide and Optimus who loved Kaylee because she loved everything, Gina Torres for Prowl who saw some of his dedication to Prime in Zoe's to the Captain, and Ron Glass for Jazz who had his own ideas about the Shepherd's back-story. When the actors remarked on the odd names, Bumblebee was prepared: "They're our call signs." The answer seemed to sit well with them -- he'd have to thank Jazz again.

Adam Baldwin looked up at him, clapped him on the back and handed him a handful of posters pre-signed by the cast, "We're grateful for your service to our country, son. Pass these along to your unit with our thanks."

Bumblebee smiled down at Adam. That struck him as unexpected because he was used to looking up at everyone in his world and in his processor Jayne was huge. He said genuinely, "Thank you, I will."

He hung around the table while Mitzi got her autographs, and took the camera she held out to him to get a picture of her with Gina Torres. Bumblebee handled the tiny digital camera gently. Because of hanging around with Spike so much he was well enough acquainted with human technology that he took a few pictures he thought were pretty good. In his CPU, he triggered his video recorder and saved the last few minutes that had passed through his optics, on the theory that Mitzi might like to have a copy of the snippet of her and Gina together. In Bumblebee's opinion, Mitzi was more intensely Zoe than Gina: darker skin and eyes, short simple hair that seemed more appropriate for an infantry soldier than Gina's gorgeous mane, and a bigger frame. Next to Mitzi, Gina was a lithe dancer and Mitzi the steady fighter. He shook his head as a strange image went though his processor.

-X-X-X-

-:-Bumblebee to Jazz. Everything all right out there?-:-

-:-Yeah, man, no worries. Did ya get through the line b'fore they left?-:-

-:-Yes! The Big Damn Heroes were great. I got our list of autographs and A.B. gave me 8 posters signed by the whole cast as a 'thank you' for our service to the country.-:-

-:-If only he knew, 'Bee! Shiny, though. Ya gonna be ready to head out soon?-:-

-:-In a while. Look, I have to go, Jazz. My new friend's heading back from the restroom, we're going to the vendor hall. Bumblebee out.-:-

Bumblebee could hear Jazz' smile get wider. -:-Wait a tick, here. New friend?-:- Jazz sounded amused, but when didn't he? -:-Did ya sell the Go-Bot fan story?-:-

-:-I think so. Well enough, anyway. Bumblebee out.-:-

-:-'Kay. Jazz out.-:-

-X-X-X-

They spent the rest of the afternoon together. Bumblebee let Mitzi talk him into joining a Serenity role-playing game. That turned out to be fun, but particularly weird for Bumblebee. For a few hours he was an Autobot pretending to be a man in a suit pretending to be a passenger with a past on a spaceship in a solar system that Skyfire assured him did not exist in the known reaches of space. He enjoyed the chance to continue to talk to Mitzi but had to admit he was relieved when his character ended up in a coma in the infirmary.

-:-Bumblebee-bot what's happenin'?-:- Jazz hailed him on the radio, -:-Ya been in there all day!-:- Jazz had patiently waited in the parking lot, wishing he could openly go in, too.

-:-Mitzi talked me into playing an RPG with her, but my character's in a coma.-:- Bumblebee felt a little guilty for not keeping Jazz quite as up-to-date as he knew Jazz wanted.

-:-We can't stay much longer, 'Bee. Gotta get back to the Ark 'fore Prowl gets worried.-:-

-:-Just a little while longer, Jazz? I'll bring the posters out to you if you want?-:-

-:-Tha's okay, 'Bee; I can't appreciate 'em as much in m' auto-mode, ya know? You can stay a little while longer, but be thinkin' to wrap it up.-:- Jazz didn't want to spoil Bumblebee's fun but also didn't want to go home to a righteously angry Prowl. They'd only gotten him to agree to their outing on the condition they not blow cover. Jazz was personally responsible for their relationship with the government and lately, the government wanted them completely out of sight and out of mind.

-:-Right. Bumblebee out.-:-

-:-Jazz out.-:-

Bumblebee felt a hand on his forearm again and found Mitzi trying to get him to make optic contact with her.

She wore a concerned expression. "Are you okay? You kinda zoned out for a minute there."

He smiled a little sheepishly. "I'm supposed to be in a coma! Sorry though, what did you say?"

"I said, 'how 'bout we go grab some dinner or something? Breakfast was a long time ago for me and we haven't had anything since the Browncoats events started at 9 this morning." Her expression was unreadable for Bumblebee.

"That would be out of character, you know, a Go-Bot eating human food." Maybe now would be the time to make his exit?

"You don't have to be in character all the time! In fact, I think I'm getting tired of this vest. Maybe I'll go up to my room and change before dinner." She looked away, like she was thinking about something else. Her expression reminded Bumblebee of Prowl when his logic circuits were telling him something he didn't like.

Before he could formulate a response - he really didn't want to leave yet - her expression changed. Now, she reminded him of Jazz when he was planning something Prowl wouldn't like. Bumblebee really hoped he was not playing the Prowl to her Jazz.

To the game master, she said, "Your junior mechanic just got herself electrocuted in the engine room. No chance of resuscitation. It's been fun, though, thanks." Over the groans of the other players - their senior mechanic was in the brig sleeping off a drinking binge - she took firm hold of one of Bumblebee's wrists and stood up. Unsure of what a young man would do, Bumblebee stood up with her. "Our comatose passenger just took a turn for the worse. I don't think he'll pull through." The GM waved them off with a smirk.

She led him to the elevators in the lobby of the hotel. He was acutely aware of the fact that he should not be there. His processor was not presenting him with an acceptable way out. After a beep, one of the pairs of doors opened and she led him into the car after it cleared out. He wondered if he should be grateful no one else got in with them. It gave him a sense of the claustrophobia he knew some humans suffered: it seemed small and rickety compared to the elevators he was used to. He placed his hands on the bar at the back of the car and stretched his legs out in front of him. She pressed a button and the doors closed.

He turned off his optics for an astrosecond to concentrate better on his predicament. Mitzi had other plans for him. She kissed him.

He registered everything about it. The pressure of her right hand steadying her against his left shoulder plate. The softness of her clothing where her thigh brushed his left hand as it gripped the elevator bar. The texture of the leather of her vest where her chest touched his. The humidity of her breath against his face as she leant in. The temperature of her left hand on his cheek near the seam where his face met his helmet. The softness of her lips where they touched his. It was ... circuit-scrambling. He responded to her as best he could, moving his lip components along with hers.

After an eternal moment of that soft kiss, she pulled back a little and opened her eyes to look in his optics that he turned back on as they parted. "That's not latex," she whispered, studying his face.

He stopped cycling air through his cooling system.

The elevator stopped. The tell-tale beep sounded. Mitzi's eyes narrowed slightly. The doors started to open on an empty hallway. _Thank Primus!_ floated through his otherwise blank processor.

She trailed her right hand down to his left as she stepped away from him. His dermal plating felt the lack of her presence now, bereft, where she had touched him. Every circuit in his arm sang as her fingers drifted down to his hand. He could feel her heartbeat through her fingers as she grasped two of his. Eyes never leaving his face, she drew him out of the elevator with her.

Academically, he knew he should leave. Get back in the elevator, press the button marked with an 'L1' for Lobby, leave the hotel and never, ever attend a human function of any kind ever again. If she hadn't already figured out he wasn't a man in a suit, she was perilously close to it now and he could imagine several ways in which that could go very badly. He tried to keep his expression blank.

Silently, she led him away from the elevator to a door near the end of the hall. Awkwardly, she took a card from her right back pocket with her left hand, unwilling to let go of him. She passed the card through a slot in the door causing a yellow then a green light to come on. She opened the door and ushered him in, finally loosing her grip on his fingers. Only after turning on the entry light, closing and locking the door, tuning the TV to a news channel, and returning to where he stood in the entryway to lay her hands on his chestplate did she speak again.

"This isn't a costume, is it?" she looked up into his optics from too close. And still not close enough. He didn't answer. "I wondered when I realized I couldn't see your eyes behind your mask."

His core temperature had risen; he resumed air flow across the fins. He wanted to touch her; he wanted to spend more time with this human. He gently placed his hands on her shoulders. "I want to tell you. I shouldn't." He stared into her beautiful eyes, the color of the motor-honey Ratchet let them use when they didn't have a chance to get their maintenance done on schedule. "Can you know a thing and not tell it, ever?"

"Only if you promise you'll see me again after I know it." Her tone was teasing.

"I will, if you still want to see me again after you know it." He tried to match her tone.

That look returned to her face, the one that said 'I-don't-like-my-own-logic'. She looked down his form slowly, stopping here and there. He waited, watching her. When her eyes traveled back up to his optics he found himself wishing he were already through with the telling.

"I'm from Cyb-" he began, and was shocked when she cut him off by moving her hands up to grasp the sides of his head and pull him down to kiss her. He off-lined his optics and wrapped his arms lightly around her shoulders, then let them drop a little lower to hold her against him. Her lips were soft and moist against his.

"You're so alive," she breathed against his cheek a tick later, "but metal. Do you feel me against your skin when I touch you?"

"Yes," he replied, as softly as she spoke. "I feel every micron of your contact." He moved his cheek against hers, optics still off. "It's a-" he could get used to being interrupted by kisses. It beat Bluestreak's chatter by a megamile!

This time, she took advantage of his shock. This one was no chaste kiss: she covered his mouth with hers and ran something wonderful over his lip components lightly. _Tongue_ his processor supplied. Then she moved her whole body against his as she more forcefully explored his mouth with her tongue. He moaned softly. She seemed to take that as encouragement, backing farther into the room, pulling him with her. He wrapped his glossa gently around her tongue.

She stopped everything for an astrosecond. He wondered if he'd done something wrong and on-lined his optics. She broke the kiss to look at him again, moving her hands back down to his chest. As her eyes moved from his mouth up to his optics, he asked, "Was that bad?"

"No," she said, shaking her head once in what he'd learned to recognize as a negating motion, "just unexpected." She looked away from him to get her bearings in the room. When she looked back at him she added, "Let's try it again in a minute. What do you call that? It's not a tongue."

"The closest translation we've found is 'glossa'," he supplied.

She nodded as she backed out of their embrace. "Glossa. Okay." She gestured toward the room at large and then the little refrigerator, "Why don't you make yourself comfortable as you can. I put some decent drinking water and snacks in the fridge earlier, you're welcome to some if you want. I need to run to the bathroom a moment." And she left him for the little room.

He'd seen plenty of hotel rooms in human media. He never imagined he'd be in one. It seemed to match pretty closely what they depicted: thin, nondescript carpet under his feet; a berth, tiny and fluffy by Cybertronian standards; a weak-looking chair, a television, and some furniture with drawers. This one had an area near the hallway door that had a little sink and a refrigerator. His systems were fine: he'd topped up his fuel and all his fluids before he left the Ark with Jazz the night before. He looked curiously at the berth. The word _bed_ drifted through his processor, he thought that was the human word for it, but somehow it was also a verb. Some of the 'Bots had taken it up and would say they were going to 'bed down' for recharge which he knew was different from what Ironhide meant when he teased Prowl for finally letting Jazz 'bed' him...

_I'm hangin' out with Blue too much,_ he shook his head at himself, _rambling in my own CPU._

He thought he should sit down to wait. That was what humans did, right? But the chair was out of the question: his skidplate might fit but there was no way it would bear his weight. The bed might be sturdy enough, but that seemed...presumptuous, somehow. He settled beside the bed on the floor with his legs folded under him. Just as he turned his attention to the television, Mitzi finished up and exited the bathroom. He watched as she went to the refrigerator.

"You sure you don't want anything?" She asked, glancing at him after she noticed the contents of the little cold-box were untouched.

He smiled and shook his head in that human gesture. He didn't get attended to very often like that; he usually did the attending on others. It felt...nice.

"Suit yourself," she said, getting a bottle of water and some sort of sustenance for herself. Then she came over and looked down at him on the floor. "You can sit on the bed, you know. You're my guest." Her tone held a bit of indignation.

He didn't understand why she didn't seem to like him on the floor, and said so. "This is probably better for me - I'm heavier than I look."

"Suit yourself," she repeated with a shrug, and sat on the side of the bed nearest him, stretching her legs out briefly before folding them up in front of her. This put them nearly shoulder to shoulder. Bumblebee definitely liked that. "I hate to eat in front of you, but I'm really hungry."

That statement made little sense to him, so he just looked at her, admiring her. She looked away, pretending to be interested in the news a moment. As she opened her bottle of water she encouraged him to speak, "What exactly are you? You started to tell me; I apologize for interrupting earlier."

"No apology needed - interrupt me like that anytime! I - I've never been very bold about it when I've..." he had to increase airflow over his cooling systems. "Never been bold about pursuing physical intimacy." That turn of phrase drew her eyes back to his face. Now it was his turn to pretend interest in the TV. "Ah, I'm a transformer, a mechanoid. Person. Entity. My body is electromechanical where yours is biological and... I have a processor that allows my spark to control my body and interact with my surroundings where you have a brain that does a similar thing for yours... your spirit, soul... Whatever word you choose for your spark. We've found many translations for that, even in just this one language." He paused, knowing that was a touchy subject for many humans, matters of the spark. It didn't seem to bother her, so he continued. "I'm from a place far from here, called Cybertron. A different planet." She snorted at that, seeming to choke on her water. He looked back at her, concerned, turning his torso and raising his arms to offer assistance if she needed it. She patted her chest with one hand and made what he recognized as 'go on' motions with the other one, her snack and bottle of water placed carefully against her legs on the bed. He turned back toward the television. "It's beautiful, really, but compared to Earth it's desolate. It doesn't orbit one star, either, it's solitary and part of a different arm of the galaxy." He paused, thinking he'd never be allowed out of the Ark again.

"So, how'd you get here?"

"I joined a group called the Autobots," he looked down and gestured at the symbol on his chest, "they were fighting to keep another group, called Decepticons, from taking control of all the energon - energy - on the planet and forcing everyone to comply with their..." He paused, never having personally tried to describe the Decepticon's goals in this language the words were not readily accessible. "Ideal of Order. They even developed something called a 'robosmasher' that forcibly alters a transformer's programming to serve their purposes."

She swallowed the last bit of her food; he watched her throat work as she took in a mouthful of water. It was fascinating to him, how these biological creatures worked in some ways so much like his kind. She continued to face the television. "It's the same story every time," she said, "someone always wants to make over the world according to his own ideas, as if he has any right to dictate how others live their lives."

"Exactly," he said, amazed that she seemed to understand so readily. _She's a Browncoat, she's thought about this._ "Life -- even mechanoid life -- cannot be perfectly orderly! Forcing order on it, kills it. Makes it just existence, not living." He shook his head again, to get back on topic. "Running low on energon, a group of us set off to try to find a new source of it, to bring back to Cybertron to fuel the resistance. We were being starved out! We were pursued, then boarded by the 'Cons and crashed here, a long time ago. Something happened and literally jarred our ship back on-line. Our base - the remains of our ship - really is in Oregon like I said in my posts. I really am the smallest 'Bot in my unit and specialize in recon. I can go places the others are too big for, in their mech forms."

"Mech forms? Short for Mechanoid? Right. What other forms do you have?" She was looking at him again, he could tell.

He turned to face her fully again, leaning his shoulder on the wall beside the bed. He found he liked looking slightly up at her like this, the angle was excellent. He also appreciated that she seemed to place importance on meeting his optics with her eyes. "We each have one, sometimes two, alternate forms. Those of us here on Earth were rebuilt so that our alternates pass for human vehicles. I have only one: a Volkswagen. My friend Jazz looks like a Porsche, Prowl's a Datsun, Ironhide's a van..." he trailed off. This might be too much for her.

"Hmmmmm." She studied him again. "Volkswagen. Right." She leaned toward him, placing her hands on his shoulders. She rested her forehead against his, which set his systems cycling faster -- she couldn't know it, but that was a particularly intimate gesture among mechs. Her eyes seemed to be on his lip components. "I've never kissed a Volkswagen before. Can't say I've even imagined it. You are certainly not like any other Volkswagen on the planet, are you." It didn't sound much like a question, so he didn't answer. He put his hands lightly on her waist. "I've also never wanted to jump someone I just met."

Bumblebee had never heard that turn of phrase before, but somehow it made his circuits sing, made him aware of the feeling of the coolant in his lines, the cycling of his fuel pump, the vibration of every servo in his frame. He wanted more contact with her. Boldly, he lifted her from her perch and moved to place her on his lap. She complied, somehow maintaining the contact with his forehead and moving her legs to straddle his. "I'm not sure what that means, but-"

She kissed him again. Optics off-line, he thought _Primus, that's good!_ Her body temperature had gone up a bit since the last one, but his plating was warming up to help cool his internal systems, so now she felt cooler to his touch. It was thrilling. She moved her hands over his chestplate as she again slipped her tongue past his lips. She found the edges of his armor and gently brushed the exposed cables with her hands.

He moaned and opened his mouth to allow her better access, running his hands up and down her sides. He wrapped his glossa around her tongue again; this time, she was prepared. She gently drew it into her mouth with her tongue. It was strange, but exciting. Her mouth was cool and wet where his own felt hot and dry. She did something with her tongue that trapped his glossa against the roof of her mouth. Coupled with what she was doing with her hands -- he thought his CPU might shut down.

She broke the kiss. "Is that okay?" she asked, concerned. He nodded without bringing his optics on-line. He moved one hand up to her head, enjoying the feeling of her hair under his fingers and palm, and pulled her back to him, kissing her forehead, then her nose and her lips, experimenting with his glossa against her lips and teeth this time. He moved down to her neck. She arched her back, bringing more of her abdomen into contact with his and making it easier for him to access her throat. His engine started to purr and he hoped she found the feeling pleasant against her body. He gently nipped at the edge of a bone barely covered by her skin -- _collarbone_ flitted through his CPU, so he knew he was still on-line -- and let his glossa curl into the hollow at the base of her neck, lip components moving against the ridges on either side.

She had both hands under his chestplate near his shoulders, gently stroking the cables and coolant lines she found there, and exciting all the circuits in the area. He could feel the vibrations of every little mechanism in his arms and legs speeding up, warming his skin everywhere, especially where she was touching him.

She seemed to like what he was doing: her breath speeding up, her strokes growing more confident, her body pressing more firmly against his. He could feel her heartbeat through her clothing, against his chest and abdomen, his upper legs, his hand on the small of her back, more so even through the touch of her hands and wrists inside his plating. He ran a finger experimentally under the bottom edge of her vest at her back, encountered an opposing edge of the cloth of her pants. He kissed around the side of her neck, at the limit of what her shirt would allow. He ghosted his glossa over her skin there and she drew in a sharp breath. A brief image from _Firefly_ flashed in his memory of Inara with the Counselor and it dawned on him that although she was touching every bit of his skin directly, he was not touching much of hers.

The thought seemed to hit her nearly simultaneously. _Maybe physical intimacy isn't so different between forms_ he thought. She gently drew her hands from under his chestplate and pulled back slightly, finding his mouth with hers and moving to unbuckle one side of her vest. He moved both his hands down to her waist, broke the kiss and on-lined his optics to see what she was doing.

"Stupid vest," she muttered as she finally wiggled the first buckle loose, "too many buckles."

"Let me," he offered, now that he was sure of what needed to be done. He rested his forehead against hers, completely drawing her attention back, and started to deftly work the tiny buckles on each side of her vest at once. She raised her hands to his neck, tenderly stroking the sturdy cables that held his head on his body. He didn't need his optics, so he turned them back off and kissed her lips again. He shuddered as she found a major motivity cable. "Now what?" he asked when there were no more buckles to undo.

"Watch me," she said huskily, standing up. He could do that as long as she'd let him!

She took a few steps away from him, pulling the vest over her head as she moved. She dropped it on the floor. She turned away from him, giving him a great view of her back side - he hadn't noticed before how visually pleasing the shape of her aft was. When she turned back to face him, she was unbuttoning her shirt, exposing more of her beautiful dark skin. Before she removed her shirt completely, she sat on the edge of the bed, in profile to him. She was doing something to her boots. He got up on his knees to get a better angle.

"Wanna help?" she said, a twinkle in her eye as she looked at him out of the side of it.

"How can I?" he replied, leaning toward her and placing a hand on the bed near her to steady himself.

"Turn the TV off and we'll work somethin' out."

He didn't have to stand up to reach the remote where she'd left it on the bed. For an astrosecond he thought his fingers might be too large to work the buttons - _I have the smallest hands of any 'Bot!_ - they weren't though, and he found the button sensibly marked 'Power'. The TV winked off. He turned his full attention back to Mitzi only to find she'd finished with her footwear and stood back up in front of him. She had her shirt off and was dropping it on the floor. He reached for her with both hands.

"'Bee!" she exclaimed, giggling a little. He found that encouraging and ran the index finger of each hand under the waistband of her pants from the small of her back around each side. She squirmed lithely and placed her hands on his shoulders.

"You still have too many layers on, Mitzi," he teased, his volume low, enjoying the sound of her name passing his vocalizer. His fingers found the closure of her slacks at the front. He'd seen Spike button a jacket enough times that he was confident with this and performed his first unbutton event smoothly. He encountered a second button, facing inboard, and dealt with it, too. The zipper was a concept he'd seen in advertisements and managed cleanly.

No longer sure of how to proceed with her clothing, he looked up at her. She was so close! He ran his hands up over her ribs, marveling at the smoothness of her skin, getting the impression that it was stretched over a frame not so different from his own. Kneeling, he was at the perfect height to kiss her neck again, so he did. He worked his thumbs up under the last garment on her upper body. _Bra_ registered in his CPU, and he remembered it was the source of some comedic routines he'd heard: infamously hard to separate from the wearer. She was working her hands over and into his shoulder joints, sending distracting, processor-scrambling sensations everywhere. Struggling valiantly to focus on his hands, optics off, he rested his face on her shoulder and found the clasp with his left hand. There seemed to be some sort of little hooks...using both hands, he relieved the tension in the band and "Got it!" he said softly against her collar bone in triumph as the hooks came free.

She chuckled. "Good work!" she said and kissed the side of his helm, right at the seam that was the base of his transceiver - one of the horns of his helmet. He shuddered. "Like that?" she asked, then did it again before he could answer.

"Primus!" he exclaimed, shuddering again, and nuzzled his face into the side of her neck, taking that horn out of easy reach of her mouth. He felt more than heard her small laugh: felt it in his hands on her body as he moved them back around her ribs to the front, felt it in the shake of her thighs against his chestplate. As his thumbs caressed the skin that had recently been covered by her bra, she shuddered. He gently grasped the lingering garment and moved to remove it, which required her to remove her hands from him. He on-lined his optics, feeling immediately bereft of her touch as they leaned slightly apart.

She backed away a step, leaving him holding the scrap of precisely-formed cloth. He could only watch in fascination as she slid her pants over her thighs, down her lower legs and stepped out of them, leaving them empty and lifeless on the floor with her other coverings. He dropped her bra on top of her shirt. One even smaller scrap of cloth remained, seeming to cling desperately to her hips, covering the last bit of her body.

_Panty_ drifted through his processor. For a few ticks, the only sounds he could hear were his own engine and cooling system cycling. Every system in his body was running strong, either in a state of excitation or working to cool and sustain those that were.

"Well," she said, "I can't say I've had that effect on anyone before."

"You're...stunning..." he admitted.

"I'm glad you find me so," she purred, then grabbed the cover from the bed in both hands and pulled it off onto the floor near her feet. "Come here," she beckoned with one hand.

Devastator couldn't have kept him away from her. He got to his feet carefully and slowly closed the distance between them. She grasped both his wrists, placing his hands on her hips. Mitzi looked up into his optics again, her fingertips tracing his rear window. "Take them off," she breathed. He didn't understand the plural, but that was unimportant. He gently hooked his thumbs into the slim elastic on either side and pushed the garment down her body, caressing her legs as he did so, ending up on his knees in front of her again.

Every inch of her body was exposed and waiting for his touch. He trembled at the thought. It was exhilarating. He captured her mouth with his, nipping softly at her lips, resting his hands on her thighs briefly. She was working her hands into his shoulders again and it was making every system thrum. He massaged her aft with his hands, finding it to be outside his experience: firm and soft at once. Tires came closest in his experience, and he had a stray thought that maybe a Lamborghini's leather seats might approach it, but he had doubts.

Although she seemed to enjoy what he was doing, it wasn't getting a strong reaction, and he suddenly became convinced that he wanted one. Wanted to hear her cry his name in passion. He'd watched enough human media to be convinced it was common when a woman was truly pleased by her lover. He moved his kissing from her mouth to her neck, causing her to arch her back a little. She squeezed a power cable and for a moment he was afraid he might go off-line, but his engine sped up a little and he stayed alert. He kept one hand on her aft and moved the other around front, to brush against the short hair there that had been covered by her panty. Smooth skin underneath, so he let his fingers follow the line where leg met abdomen that tended to be a particularly sensitive seam on a mech and found that it made her tremble. Meanwhile, he kissed and stroked the skin of her neck with his glossa, over her collarbones and down to one side of her chest. _Breast_ winked through his CPU; he didn't know if it was right, but didn't care. He kissed it and manipulated the tip with his glossa. That seemed to distract her somewhat.

Further exploration of the upper leg seam proved fruitful: the temperature of the skin was higher, the texture changed a bit and when he tentatively mapped the outline of the small orifice he found there, she gasped and completely stopped the ministrations inside his shoulders. _My hands are too large for this._ Then he smiled to himself where he'd been kissing her: he had an idea.

He moved the hand on her aft up a little higher on her back and moved the other to firmly grasp her thigh. He turned both of them in place and, kissing his way down her abdomen, lifted her a little to lay her down on the bed. He moved the hand from her back to her belly and knelt lower there at the edge of the bed.

She found her voice. "You don't have to-" she began, sitting up a little against the pressure of his palm.

"What?" he asked, looking up at her briefly. "Do you think you'll like it?"

She met his optics, with an expression that seemed to him completely out of place, considering the circumstances: embarrassment. She nodded, almost shyly, biting her lower lip.

"I want to make you feel...as much pleasure as possible. You're figuring out my design just fine - an overload is in my near future if you keep it up - let me try to do the same for you." He took it as a good sign that his words made her shiver.

"You...mechs...have orgasms?" she said it as if the word itself were powerful.

Bumblebee was drawn to caress her face. "The way you say that word, I want to say 'yes' although I haven't learned about the human equivalent of our energy flares. Tell me afterward if I bring you to one, and I'll do the same. Call it an exercise in translation." It pleased him that she closed her eyes, nuzzled against his palm a moment, then lay back on the bed. He rested his hand back on her abdomen, feeling the movement of her musculature as she breathed deeply. He crouched a little lower, gently moving one of her legs aside with his other hand.

He kissed her opening, finding the feeling of the short curls exotic against his dermal plating. Mitzi trembled again. Bumblebee off-lined his optics. He kissed the little nub at the forward end of the orifice and heard her gasp. He flicked his glossa over it and felt its temperature rise further. He explored the whole area with his lips and glossa, and when dipping it into the orifice drew a wordless exclamation from her, he knew he was on the right track. Over and over he caressed the inside of her body with his glossa, twining it gently around the knob of firm flesh deep inside. He heard her pulling at the bedding with her hands, then Mitzi moaned his name and he felt his energy field build higher. The area grew wetter and its temperature rose as he stimulated it. She writhed against him, and seemed to be wanting to sit up. He let her, but moved both hands to grasp her hips and continue his ministrations. She caressed the sides of his helm with her hands, then grabbed both his horns. That made him moan, even made him pause in his activity.

"'Bee!" She pulled his head up by her grip on his transceivers. He turned his optics back on to look at her. The skin of her face was darker than before, and covered with a fine sheen of moisture. He noticed that her lips looked a little swollen and wondered if that was from kissing him. "Let me lay down on the floor," she said, "I want you to lay beside me now."

Unsure of what she thought he could do for her in that position, he complied. He registered that his plating temperature was now notably above her temperature; his core was approaching overheating levels. She stretched herself out on the cover from the berth as far to one side of the small space as she could and drew him down beside her. Enthralled, he watched her. She closed her eyes, so he off-lined his optics. "You're so warm," she said, then claimed his mouth with hers as she traced the outline of each of his windows she could reach. His systems were singing with her heartbeat in every line of fluid and current and gear. He wanted her to feel this good. As he again twined his glossa with her tongue, he moved his right arm, that he was lying on, to allow that hand to caress her nearest breast. He moved his left arm, completely free, to trail down her body from her face, over her collar bone and breast, to her hip. She shuddered; his engine picked up another notch. His energy field crackled. He hoped he was affecting her as much as she affected him. She pulled his body a little more over hers and guided his left hand down toward the orifice he'd been attending before. Her legs were open to allow his touch. He stroked the area. That wasn't what she wanted. She pressed on his hand with hers, hard. He didn't understand. She drew his glossa into her mouth and did that amazing thing again, somehow changing the pressure against it drastically and moaned along with him. Then he got it - she wanted him to do with his fingers what he'd done with his glossa.

He didn't actually need to reclaim his glossa to use his vocalizer, so he didn't. "I don't want to hurt you," he said. It was muffled by her mouth against his, but he was sure she made it out. She gave a tiny shake of her head and moaned again, raising her hips a little and changing the angle against his hand. He barely inserted the tip of one finger. She gasped, releasing his glossa. He stroked the sides of the opening cautiously, feeling her heartbeat strongly through that contact. It seemed in perfect time to the vibrations in his body, and he felt the thrumming in his arm get stronger.

Apparently she did, too. She arched her body a little harder. "More," she breathed, moving both of her hands to stroke his transceivers again. He complied, slipping the finger farther in and sending energy purposefully into the motion of disengaged transformation gears inside his wrist and fingers. "Oh," she breathed, arching her back and massaging his transceivers, the seams, and the sides of the center ridge of his helmet. He leant down and mouthed the side of her neck, flicking at beads of sweat with his glossa. His temperature continued to rise as systems cycled faster. She moved her hips and he matched that rhythm with the motion of his hand. He found it pleasing that she seemed to be a self-lubricating system, cool and wet to his hot and dry. The thrumming in his body was still matching her heartbeat. It amazed him how two completely alien systems could fall into a cooperative pattern so easily. Suddenly her breathing grew ragged and she started breathing his name, like a mantra: "'Bee. Don't. Stop." She stopped moving her hands and just held onto his horns, her voice growing higher in pitch and louder in volume. His energy field grew, warming his plating further. She moved her head quickly, devouring his mouth for a moment before crying out as a wave of cool fluid poured over his hand from her body. She held perfectly still except for breathing, so he did, too.

She relaxed her grip on his transceivers and kissed his mouth lightly. "That." Dry kiss to his nose ridge, "Was." Dry kiss to his right optic, "Wow." Dry kiss to his left optic, "Your turn." Bumblebee brought his optics on-line to look at her, not sure what to make of her words. He noted the muscles beginning the move to bring her legs together, so he removed his hand from between them, resting it on her hip.

"Does that mean..." suddenly he felt shy about asking. Didn't know where it came from, but her coyness about it had infected him somehow. _Humans have so many taboos!_

"Yes, that was... intense for me," she shuddered and closed her eyes briefly. She ran her hands down his helm to trace the seam between the yellow and the white around his face. "Never actually had an orgasm the first time with a new lover before."

He didn't know how to answer that, so he didn't, but his systems responded by speeding up yet again. He was close to overcharge.

"So, how can I ...bring you...release?" She asked, rolling toward him. Then, when he could only look at her without answering, she moved her hands to his shoulders and rolled him onto his back.

He sought and found her right hand with his left, and brought it up to his mouth, kissing her palm and then tracing each finger with his glossa. Listening to his coolant rushing through his lines, it dawned on him what would easily do it.

She was watching him intently. She shuddered violently. "I want to cause you aftershocks like that," she said, "I want to short your circuits!"

_You already have_ he thought, but couldn't get it to his vocalizer. He rested her hand on his cheek again - she seemed to like to touch his face anyway - and put both hands on her hips to guide her to straddle his waist. She was looking into his optics again. "You're beautiful," he vocalized while he kissed her hand again. He could feel the vibration throughout his frame, could feel it where it transferred into her body. He opened his mouth to vocalize properly this time: "Do you feel that? All my systems pulsing with yours." She nodded. "The source and center is my spark chamber, inside my chest. Remember how you worked your hands into my shoulders earlier? If you do that again, and touch my spark chamber, your heart beat is probably strong enough right now to carry that rhythm to my spark chamber and ... short my circuits."

He turned his optics back off and let his hands rest on her thighs. Her skin was so cool and smooth and cushioning, he didn't want to stop touching her. Every sensor was active, every molecule waiting to thrill to her touch.

"Guide me?" she asked breathlessly, leaning forward over him.

He really didn't want to move at all. She'd put aside innumerable taboos for him, he could overcome this one. Spark chambers were supposed to be hidden, touched only after a relationship was well-established and stable, the last demonstration of trust between a couple. Gently, he pushed her a little farther down his body so she was sitting astride his thighs. Then, he guided her hands to the edge where the yellow ridge beneath his windshield ended. "Under my windshield, up and to the left a little. Nearly on my fore-aft centerline. You should be able to trace the largest power cable up to it." He was shaking, the vibrations from all his pumps and servos so strong now he feared he might fly apart. His engine sounded loud in the small room.

She traced the seal of his windshield with her fingertips, then leant down and started to wiggle her hands under it in earnest. Every cord, every cable she touched sent waves of pleasure through his sensors, cooling and exciting at once.

She found his main power feed, brushing against it. "Mitzi," his vocals sounded needy to his own audios. Now he was the one gripping the bedding with outflung hands.

"You're so warm, Bumblebee," she murmured to him, grasping the cable firmly with one hand and working her other one further up along it, brushing countless other cables and sensors along the way, carrying the excitation deeper into his core. She rested her forehead against his windshield.

"Oh Primus!" and "Mitzi! That's it!" he exclaimed as she suddenly found and wrapped her hand around his spark chamber. His systems hit their highest rates, engine redlining; his electromagnetic field flared violently. A blue light swelled up out of him, filling the room briefly. He lost track of time and space.

His cooling system cycled. He could hear the fluid flowing, feel his fuel pump running and his engine idling. Mitzi gently stroked his spark chamber once more, and his body shook. He groaned, more tiredly than appreciatively, and she must have understood because she quickly withdrew her hands from where she was elbow-deep in his body, touching as little of his internals as she could.

"Are you ...okay?" she trailed off, almost not completing the question. She sounded afraid, and for a moment he couldn't imagine why.

"Oh, Mitzi! Yes," he vocalized, drawing her up to lay beside him, tucking a corner of the cover down over his shoulder so she could lay her head on its softness instead of the metal of his armor. He kissed her forehead. "That was...spark-flickering."

"Let's rest a little while, and see what else we can get up to tonight?" she said muzzily, snuggling down into the bedcover and pressing herself more firmly against his side panel.

He curled his right arm up under his head. With his left arm down her back, her head on his shoulder, and her body pressed exquisitely against him, he was content to recharge a while.

-X-X-X-

-:-Jazz to Bumblebee.-:- Pause. -:-Bumblebee? Where in the Pit are ya?-:-

He chose not to answer.

-:-'Bee, why does m' scan show yer aft on the sixth floor?-:-

He seriously considered turning his radio completely off.

-:-How much did ya tell her?-:-

He didn't know Jazz had a clipped tone. -:-More than you know, Jazz.-:-

-:-I'll see ya back at the Ark, 'Bee.-:-

-:-Jazz, we both know you're bluffing. When she comes back on-line, I'll come out. I'm sure she wants to meet you. But I don't have it in me to just walk out while she's recharging.-:-

-:-'Bee, I gotta know. Did you...?-:-

-:-Primus! Jazz!-:-

No response. That had to be a first: Jazz speechless. _Should have denied it_ passed his CPU. Bumblebee waited a full breem for Jazz to respond. -:-Jazz? Are you all right?-:-

-:-I'm fine, man, jus' fine. Shocked. But fine. Wow.-:-

-:-How much trouble am I gonna be in?-:-

-:-Dunno. There's quite a pot ridin' on Tracks 'cause he's a smooth talker. We're talkin' barrels o' high grade. I don' believe anyone bet on you. Hnnn. Come to think of it, Prowl may've...logical 'cause yer small, ya know? If he did, that could save yer aft.-:-

That was too much to process. -:-Bumblebee out.-:- Then _Seaspray never told anyone else..._ drifted through his processor, followed by, _wonder what the bet is actually on..._

-:-Alright, Romeo. Jazz out.-:-


	2. Preferred Means of Communication

Title: _Preferred Means of Communication_, sequel to _Exercise in Translation_

Rating: PG-13 for adult issues and implied xenosexuality.

Pairing: Bumblebee/Mitzi York.

Notes: Only Mitzi York and her family are original. Transformers & Firefly/Serenity belong to corporations, not me. 5050 words. I am very annoyed with the system here, which first insisted on eating Swoop's crested smiley in _Approaching the Origin_(Faction-3), and now won't accept the less-than sign in text with a three to make a heart. I even found the HTML code for a heart, like on playing cards, and it won't allow it. So less-than-three for a heart became LV for love in text rendered here.

* * *

Bumblebee reviewed the longest email Mitzi had ever sent him. Written to him while she was on travel for work, it contained details about her life that anchored her in humanity, to his way of thinking. _Her extended family relationships are foreign,_ he thought, _Like learning a new language._For a mech from Vector Sigma, understanding attachment to one's creator was a mental leap, achievable, but only really when he got to know a created spark, like Seaspray. Mitzi's connectedness to her family, especially siblings who had very little personally in common with her - completely unlike friends - was a challenge, an abstraction for him. _So much of our interaction is abstract, really,_ he thought. _The main thread of our conversations is a fiction, a television fantasy about people who don't exist. Except for her word-choice, and her spelling, she could be another Autobot Browncoat, like Jazz or Blaster. But even when we discuss Patience or Badger, we learn about each other then, too,_ he had explained this to his friends enough times that the follow-up to the criticism 'those people you have in common don't exist' was automatic: _we use them to discuss concepts, and we find we have understanding and attitudes in common._

"Dear Bumblebee," she had written, "You ask me so many questions, and I feel like I only half answer them most of the time."

"I told you about Chris," the father of her little boy, "but I don't think I can exaggerate the impact he had on my interaction with men since. Chris is a good guy, but he's still a kid, himself. How do I explain that? He is my age, physically," Bumblebee knew they met in college, attending classes together their first year there, "but he may never settle down. I don't think it's in his nature. He's fun to be around, but, he is the center of his universe, if that makes any sense. Not that I'd ask anyone to make me, or even our child, the center of his universe, but, I'm not going to act like he's the center of mine, either. Even before I got pregnant, I had plenty of responsibility. He was fun. Neither of us wanted our relationship to be any more serious than it was, and we were together as a couple longer than a lot of people who do get married."

"My mom still nags me about it sometimes, knowing that he offered and I turned him down."

"Was that stupid? Or selfish? She says it was both, when she gets mad at me. But Chris wouldn't have been happy, white boy with conservative parents married to a black girl," it was hard for Bumblebee to remember that humans, whose colors really were all shades of brown, set great importance on it, claiming different colors were different races. It was only the beginning of Mitzi's thought, "and there's enough politics in baseball that he might've blamed his lack of career in it on me and Byron, eventually. And I wouldn't have been happy: if we'd gotten married, I probably wouldn't have finished college, and then where would I be? Probably divorced, living on alimony and welfare with no prospect of a job like I've got now. I know that last year of school was a lot harder because I had Byron, and Ma had to spend a lot of time in Texas-" where she went to college, "-helping me with him, but we lived through it. And with Chris getting a slot on a minor league team back home (he's from back east, outside of D.C.) and transferring over there for his senior year, it would have been worse if we had gotten married."

Bumblebee didn't think Mitzi was anything but reasonable. Human cultures' insistence on bonding permanently, or at least exclusively, with a partner with whom they created a sparkling, mystified him. Most Cybertronian bonds were temporary, lasting only until the creators' sparks recovered and their shared bond with the creation faded. Some bonded permanently, but it was almost unheard of since the latest upheaval decimated the Autobots. _Several cultures here insist on bonding permanently before even initiating any intimacy,_ he mused. Bumblebee remembered how weird it was to watch Spike and Carly dance around each other, pretending in front of everyone else that they didn't know each other perfectly well before they got married, and then almost carrying on that pretense out of habit afterward. _Repression, at its most pervasive,_ he thought, _trying to regulate not only the creation of offspring but personal relationships._

Mitzi explained her current life. "Ma doesn't want to admit it, but she likes it here in LA. She misses Marley," he knew that was Mitzi's sibling closest to her age, which was significant for them, "but Marley's doing okay in Shreveport, got a job as a receptionist at an oil field office and a boyfriend who treats her well. She hated school. Only Ma was surprised when she dropped out after two years." He could imagine her shrug at that point, with her mostly live-and-let-live attitude. "She won't ever make the kind of money I will, and do already, but she probably won't have to, with her life likely to be closer to what Ma imagined for us all than she'd ever admit: married to a stable man, making enough money herself to feed her kids. Ma acts like she'd have been perfectly happy with me if I had dropped out of school to marry Chris and go with him, as the good little wife. I know the woman, though: she'd have picked at me, the same as she does now, to get back to school and earn as much money as possible, anyway, always nervous about how we'd pay for Marley and Joy-" her youngest sibling, "-to got to college."

"We all like LA. I landed this job at Boeing, and Ma didn't want to move from Louisiana, but she didn't like the idea of Byron in day care all day every day, and it's working out. Really well, really. I don't think we'd have got Joy in school if she'd stayed around home-" Minden, Louisiana, Bumblebee knew that was 'home' if Mitzi didn't obviously mean Los Angeles, "-because those friends of hers were all, well, skanky." He assumed that was highly derogatory by context. "I mean, at least working at the casino or flipping burgers is honest work, but I know that Jamie she adored so much was dealing drugs in the parking lot. She was on something when Ma moved them out here, and I thought for sure she'd run away to get back there, but she didn't. Marley told her in no uncertain terms how her life would be if she wanted to stay with her: Marley's a bit of an extorcionist, maybe," he had to smile at her spelling there, because spell-check would have caught that, if she'd used it, "but she thought cleaning the apartment for her would be a great way for Joy to pay rent. Lord knows none of Joy's no-good friends could take her in."

"Joy doesn't even clean up after herself, yet, Bee, and Ma never made her, and I don't complain because Ma cleans most of our flat herself, better than I could do if it were just me and Byron here. And Joy likes LA, dreams big now, wants to work in movies, be a set designer and prop master. She's going to school now, and even did well enough her first semester to get a little scholarship to help with her next year at El Camino community college. We've got Byron in kindergarten now, and Ma found a place to work as a hair dresser part-time, which I swear gives her more energy than staying at home ever did."

"It dawned on me the other day, that my mother is still a relatively young woman, herself. My mentor at work, who seems older than her in my eyes, is only forty-three. Ma's forty-five this year. She could run rings around John-" Mitzi's team lead and mentor, "-and he's got kids who are all younger than Joy. His youngest is only a couple years older than Byron. Generations seem to run totally different among engineers than I'm used to, Bee. My momma was a grandma around the time John and his wife were having their last baby."

Then she fell to musing about his people. She didn't say, 'your kind,' or 'your species,' as so many of the humans who knew about them seemed to: she called them 'your people,' or 'your race,' when she didn't use the word 'Cybertronian'. She seemed to regard 'transformer' as equivalent to 'human', and made jokes about 'vulcans' such that he had to read up on Star Trek to make sure he got them; she used 'Cybertronian' as similar to 'American' as if it were a cultural origin, as if it were no more alien to her than 'Chinese' or 'Hindu'. She had asked him to spell out the places of his origin - planet and continent and locality - for her on more than one occasion.

She still misspelled them regularly, not that he didn't recognize them anyway, and not that there was any direct correlation between the English rendering and the original Cybertronian word. _There's no connection between my name,_ his original name in his processor, _and 'Bumblebee', except that I claim it as mine._Still, he chuckled when he read her personal versions of those names: she typed this letter on a company laptop on an airplane, and sent it as an attachment to an empty email as soon as she was connected to the internet. _She added them to her own machine's spell check,_ he knew, _but the unfamiliar computer didn't have them._So, "How do generations fall within Sybertronion families?" she asked, and, "You seem real comfortable with the ideas of sex and gender as we have them and babies as we make them here, but, do Sybertronion people reproduce sexually somehow? You refer to all your friends in your unit as 'he', actually all the transformers you've ever mentioned have been 'he' when you didn't use names. Do you have women? Or, do your people just build new ones when you have time and resources for it? Talking to you, you seem no more different to me than any other person from Earth who was raised in a different culture than me. That would be kind of a big deal, though, all men, male. But WTF, you think more like I do than a lot of the people I grew up with. Even my family doesn't get the whole Browncoat draw. Joy enjoys the show, and started going to shindigs with me with the local Browncoats, but Marley and Ma don't like anything a bit science fiction-like, and Ma figured out what Inara's 'honest living' was immediately when I tried to get her to watch the first episode and refused to watch any more after that."

"I think it was too close to someone she knew as a kid, who ran away to New Orleans. She never told me much about her, growing up, but her friend wanted more than Bossier City had to offer back then. Ma grew up in Bossier City, and her and Dad bought a little house in Minden after they got married." Mitzi had told him all about her father earlier, who was killed when she was thirteen: hence, her sense of parental responsibility for her sisters. "Now that we're in LA, and she feels what draws people out here from all over the country, she's talked about Shirley at least half a dozen times. 'Shirley would've liked it here,' she says. I know she'll tell me the whole story eventually, but I think she does know what happened to Shirley because the first time she said that, I said that Shirley may have come out here after making some money in New Orleans, and Ma said "no". Just no, like she knows that didn't happen, for a fact."

"I kind of got the impression that Shirley either started out, or ended up, a prostitute. And it isn't like in the Firefly 'verse, where the oldest profession is respected, even a little. Nobody sets out to become one, and there's no school like Inara taught at."

"I guess not many folks become what they set out to be, though."

"Did you want to be a soldier, Bumblebee? I don't want to bring it up if it makes you sad, but I didn't always want to be an engineer, and didn't have any idea there was such a thing as a thermal analyst, even when I chose my major at college. I wanted to be a veterinarian or a business owner, but I didn't like biology or chemistry 101, and the two business classes I took were just too boring to take more like them. Not hard, not challenging or interesting at all, and cook-booky, formulaeic." Mitzi's spelling. "I was- am -good at math, and really enjoyed the programming class I had, and when I told my counselor after my first semester that I wanted something that had the same feel as working with my dad on his car when I was a kid, she suggested I declare myself a mechanical engineering major so I could take the freshman level survey course and lab. That department didn't allow non-majors in their courses, and I could always transfer back out if I decided I didn't like it. I think that survey course was the most fun I'd had in school since that shop class in high school." He had to do a little research to understand that statement, too. "Really. And when I got in thermodynamics and had to exercise judgment just to get close to the right answer, I loved it. Programming came easy to me, cook-booky but a structure to create in, so ... here I am."

"You referred to having a processor as an analog to me having a brain," she referred to something he'd said, the one time they met in person. "Do your people learn new subjects by downloading the information? I mean, I watched you learn some new things while we were together," he couldn't help but picture the knowing smile she'd given him when she said almost exactly that to him before they said good-bye that day, "but experience is different from education. At least, for humans. Is it that way for transformers? But, what I'm wondering, what is 'school' for your race? Since you mentioned you have specialties, like you and Jazz are in recon, and you have a medic, a comm officer and a commander, you must know different things. How did you come to that? Did you have any freedom to choose," he knew that was particularly important to her, in her own life, "or were you built for it, programmed for it? Or, is it less organized than I imagine, more like the Browncoats or SWE," she named her engineers' volunteer group, the Society of Women Engineers, that seemed to do for her what the other Minibots did for him, "where you see a need and fill it, if you're able, and if no one sees it, or is capable of doing it, it just doesn't get done? That doesn't sound very militaristic to me, but I guess there's no reason to assume your military is as regimented as I think ours is. What's your turn-over rate like? You said your people pretty much live until someone kills them," she repeated a simplification he'd offered her when his explanation of Cybertronian life-spans proved overly detailed, "so, do you just do the job you've got until either you die or someone in an even more necessary job does, and you have to step up to fill the gap?"

"Just gave myself a chill, there. Hope I didn't write something too touchy. Let me know if I did, and I won't go there again." She was always trying to be considerate and think about what she said, what she asked. He did the same.

He enjoyed the way she signed off, in her emails, this particular letter, and most of their instant message conversations: _TTYL LVU - MAY_ for "talk to you later, love you, Mitzi Ambrosia York".

_-_X-X-X-

Their chances to have instant message conversations were limited mostly by Mitzi's commitments. Bumblebee's most common duty was on console in the communication center, so when he had the PM duty, noon to midnight, he could be logged in all evening and catch her for a few minutes if she found time to log in.

Since he was on restriction, he cultivated a lot of favors, trading duty with anyone who asked him, and standing other Autobots' shifts very often, telling them up front that as soon as he was off restriction and found a time when Jazz had no missions planned for him, he'd call on them to spot him so he could have a few weeks off. Mitzi was planning a camping trip specifically so they could have private time together.

After her business trip, she was particularly busy the rest of the week, conscious of making up for lost time with Byron and then having an evening meeting of her SWE section that kept her out too late and saw her turn in very early the following night. She logged in for a few minutes most nights, and neither of them worried about the days they missed each other. Even a short conversation was cherished.

The night she got home from Washington, D.C., he caught her for a few minutes as he stood Sunstreaker's comm duty:

**-ZoeSister-** _Hey Bee._  
**-Bumblebee-** _Hi Mitzi! How was your trip?_  
**-ZoeSister-** _OK. Nothing special._  
**-Bumblebee-** _Thank you for the long letter._  
**-ZoeSister-** _My pleasuer, Honey._  
**-Bumblebee-** _You must have been up very early today to be home already._  
He could tell she was very tired when she started getting letters out of order, different from her generally bad spelling.  
**-ZoeSister-** _Yes. Flight left Regan airport at 6:30 am, Eastern time _  
That was just her misspelling Reagan, he knew.  
**-ZoeSister-** _so 3:30 our tiem._  
**-Bumblebee-** _I bet Byron was glad to see you._  
**-ZoeSister-** _Yes._  
**-Bumblebee-** _You asked some questions in your letter..._  
**-Bumblebee-**_...would you like me to try to answer some of them now, or reply to your e-mail?_  
**-ZoeSister-** _Thankyou Bee._  
**-ZoeSister-** _email best_  
**-Bumblebee-** _Thank you for logging in tonight._  
**-ZoeSister-** _No problem! I missed you the last few days. Miss yuo in general._  
**-Bumblebee-** _Missed you too._  
**-ZoeSister-** _Write me that email, ok? I gotta goto sleep._  
**-Bumblebee-**_ I'll do that._  
**-ZoeSister-** _TTYL LVU - MAY_  
**-Bumblebee-**_LV U 2._

He hadn't noticed when he started replying to her with that, "love you, too," it meant, but it felt like the right thing to send.

-X-X-X-

As the end of Bumblebee's restriction neared, their outing became a reality: Mitzi sent him a pre-paid cell phone so they could talk once in a while.

They had to keep their calls short, both because Mitzi really couldn't afford to put a lot of money on the phone and because Red Alert called all radio frequency communication with the human world a security breach. Mitzi insisted that she understood that, and would keep the conversations short, limited to the things she "needed to hear about."

Setting differential importance on communication methods was another thing they had in common: interaction in person first, followed by real-time voice, then real-time text, with written one-way communication last.

Video chat was specifically prohibited by Red Alert: Bumblebee did ask. The security director would have prohibited instant messaging and email if Prowl would agree to it. Bumblebee wasn't the only Autobot with an internet life, though, and Prowl relied on email in his dealings with government agencies who had gotten farther and farther from phone calls and faxes over the years they had been interacting, so Red Alert's campaign against email was dead before he thought of it. Jazz went to bat for Bumblebee on the instant messaging front, claiming he liked that idea himself, of chatting real-time with humans who shared his love of music. Bumblebee also knew Jazz kept up with a couple of anarchists' forums and found the lag of personal messages within the site annoying when he really wanted to know something, and the entity with the answer was just on the other end of the web. In fact, Bumblebee knew Jazz's last two successful sorties to put a stop to the Decepticons' latest weapons development had been built around human-designed explosives he'd discussed with conspirators on the internet.

Phone calls for other than base business took some fast talking on Bumblebee's part, even though he never suggested using the hard-won Ark phone line to talk to Mitzi.

He got to speak to Mitzi three times while he was confined to the base.

The day he received the package via Spike, they talked too long for Red Alert's comfort out of sheer pleasure of hearing each other's voices, for only the second time. He realized afterward that all she'd really wanted was that personal, real-time confirmation that he liked the idea of the private outing. Neither of them wanted to hang up, though. He looked up when he felt more than heard Red Alert stand over him where he was at the limit of the Ark entryway - the only place the little communicator got a signal. Unashamed, completely comfortable confirming for Red Alert what he knew was rumored in the Ark, he signed off first, saying to Mitzi in Red Alert's hearing, "In case I haven't said it clearly, I love you. See you soon."

Red Alert looked like he might go into processor lock.

Mitzi had not expected that, he knew. "I-" she hesitated, speaking completely different from typing. Bumblebee imagined he could hear processors stall on her end of the line, too. "Oh, Honey! I love you, too. Talk to you later."

They hung up before Red Alert recovered himself enough to complain.

The second time was the day Mitzi's grandmother back in Louisiana died. "I need to lean on someone a few minutes," she explained, having called him and gotten the voicemail because he was in his quarters in the Ark when she called. He called her back as soon as the message got through, somehow penetrating the mountain to trigger the phone while he was in the galley. It vibrated against the wall of his auto-mode glove-box, startling him. His friends gave him a strange look when he stopped talking mid-sentence, startled by the unfamiliar sensation from the otherwise inert lump he'd carried for over a month at that point. He couldn't listen to the voicemail there, because the signal didn't penetrate well enough to let him, so he had to excuse himself from their company. None of them were bothered by it, but he knew they'd ask him about it when he returned.

It was not a fun conversation. She'd called him nearly two hours before, and had just finished making the arrangements to take several days off work. She was driving home from the office when he got through to her. "Can't talk now, driving," she said, and he thought her voice was hard, like Jazz taking reluctant command during a crisis. "Can I call you back in fifteen minutes? Will you be where you get a signal?"

"Yes, I'll wait right here," he said, and she must have heard him because she closed the connection.

True to his word, he was still at the entrance of the Ark when she called him back, thirteen minutes twenty-four seconds later.

As soon as he asked her what was wrong, she started to cry. He recognized the sounds from human media, like Inara's sobs in _Heart of Gold_. Gone were the matter-of-fact tone of the message she'd left initially and the terse one she'd used to tell him she was driving minutes before. "My momma," she sobbed, "she's a wreck. She was worried about Gramma," he recognized that short-form of 'grandmother', "for months but we didn't have money to fly her out there and have someone watch Byron. She was gonna go when Joy had time off at the end of the semester. And Joy's mad-sad, blamin' me that we weren't in Louisiana to be with her when she died. And," she hiccoughed a little, "I'm sorry. I haveta get a grip. Get a grip so I can be their rock in this. Gotta absorb Joy's anger, and Momma's grief, and explain to Byron that his Mommy's Ma'amaw is gone, who was his Ma'amaw's mommy," Bumblebee followed that explanation of relation well enough, but felt a bit overwhelmed for the child's sake. Mitzi kept going, "and not get him all upset over a woman he don't remember. And Marley-" She breathed heavily. "Ya'll deal with death all the time, even though you shouldn't have to..." where she was going with that, Bumblebee could only guess.

"It's okay," he said when she didn't finish her thought, cradling the phone gently against his primary audio receiver, "it'll be okay. Everyone who lives, dies. Whether it's from age, and the body breaking down from wear, or from damage, body destroyed early, it's always hard on the," he almost said 'brothers-in-arms', "family left behind. Only the body is dead," he generalized, quickly reviewing the archive he'd built about her heritage, cultural and religious, "the spark, the soul, moves on." He knew her family would need a formal ceremony to deal with the loss. "Do you need help with arrangements?" he refrained from saying 'disposal of the body', which was always a problem for Cybertronians whenever there were grieving close associates to satisfy and time for their wishes to matter. "I have duty all afternoon today. I can get on-line, make reservations, whatever you think can be done that way." _How else could I offer to help?_

He heard her take a ragged, deep breath. She repeated him, and he understood she was making the words her own. "It'll be okay," she said, "Only the body is dead, the soul just moves on." She was still crying, but quieter. "Yeah. Thank you, Honey." He heard her make a sound that had to be the clearing of her nasal passages as crying humans always had to do, to get the leaked coolant out of their airways.

"What can I do to help?" he asked again.

"You're already doing it, 'Bee, Sweetness," she said, and he didn't understand. "Lettin' me lean on you a minute, and grieve a little, and get a grip." She was breathing heavily, trying to cool overheating internals, to his way of thinking.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, or," she took a deep, steady breath that sounded a lot better than any of her speech that day, "I will be. Thank you. I'm sorry for laying this on you like this. But I haveta go, take care of my family here, okay?" She asked a question but didn't stop for an answer, "Thank you. I love you, 'Bee."

"I love you, too," he said, and heard one who had to be her mother in the background before the connection died. _Even when we see it coming, death is hard on the ones who care,_ he thought. _Some things are universal._

The third time they spoke on the phone, Red Alert was back in New York, so Bumblebee didn't feel compelled to terminate the connection at all. "I can talk until either you get tired of me or the battery runs out," he said, and they both laughed.

"Now, Honey," she mock-chided him, he could hear the laughter hiding in her voice, "don't offer if you don't mean it."

It was the best conversation they'd had yet, and neither of them was ready to hang up when Mitzi's absolute-must-be-in-bed time rolled around.

"I have to pretend to be a responsible adult," she sighed, "gotta be the grown-up and go to work tomorrow."

Bumblebee didn't know what to say to that. "I hope I don't make your duty harder," he offered.

"No, you make it easier," she countered, "you don't make any demands on my time, you are nothing but helpful, and I-" she paused, as if considering her next words carefully, "'Bee, it's weird, but I rely on you. We never miss each other more than two nights in a row, so I know we will chat very soon, no matter what. The only time we didn't, you told me about it in advance, so I knew not to worry, and... it means a lot to me, that you gave me your boss's contact information," Jazz's email address and the Ark phone line, which he made her promise to only use if she hadn't heard from him or Jazz for a month, "so if the time you were supposed to get back passed, I could at least find out what happened. That's-" she paused, and Bumblebee would have sworn she was crying, "that's very considerate of you. More so than anybody I'm not related to has ever been, really. You offered that, planned ahead, and it really," she paused again.

Into that silence, Bumblebee almost spoke, but Mitzi finished her thought, "That really made me feel like I matter to you."

"You do."

"Yeah. Thank you for that, 'Bee. You don't have to tell me, 'cause you manage to show me, even though we haven't seen each other in almost six months, and only met once, face-to-face."

Her absolute-must-be-in-bed time passed, and they kept talking until the lags between his comments and hers grew so long he thought she had fallen asleep on him. "I think my batteries have run down," she yawned, "forget the phone's."

"Go," he said, mimicking something Kaylee said, "sleep tight, don't let the space-bugs bite!"

She smiled, and her voice carried it to him as she also mimicked Kaylee, he imagined he could hear the requisite eye-roll, too: "Space-bugs?"

They laughed and signed off, both looking forward to some much-needed liberty and an opportunity to communicate one-on-one.


	3. Universal Concepts

Title: _Universal Concepts_, sequel to _Exercise in Translation_ and _Preferred Means of Communication._

Rating: PG-13 for xenosexuality, language and horror factor (but 'Bee doesn't see what he thinks he does!)

Pairing: Bumblebee/Mitzi York.

Notes: Only the character Mitzi York and the non-Cybertronian entities on the freeway are completely the product of the universe in my head-space. Everything else existed before I sat down to write. 11,200 words.

* * *

Six months on restriction, confined to the Ark, meant six months Bumblebee spent absolutely as much time as possible on the internet. They were the first six months of what he hoped would continue to be a significant relationship. _What am I doing?_ he thought nervously as he drove out on liberty for the first time since the convention, _ZoeSister was a nice web acquaintance, and is a true friend now. Mitzi. Her middle name is like something I can imagine a female Autobot choosing: Ambrosia._ He played with Cybertronian approximations, femme-seeming word forms in his own language that might come into English as _Ambrosia_. It pleased him. There would be bad puns at his expense if his friends ever learned Mitzi's middle name.

_They make a lot of fun of me already, but I try to react like they expect me to, so we can all have a laugh._ But that thought led him to contemplate more important expectations, namely Mitzi's. _Humans have such varied requirements of their friends, more of lovers, can I live up? How can I know what she even wants? What she needs?_ His processor churned on that for a while, going over all the ways they communicated. He hoped he would learn how to understand her quickly enough, and that they would be able to spend time together regularly.

A really sobering thought hit him, about the time he got on the freeway and began his road-trip in earnest: _They're so short-lived! Maybe I should have petitioned for a shorter, more severe punishment? Six months is half a year, so over half a percent of her entire life. More than that, of the lifetime left to her._

He put it in perspective: at twenty-six years old, she was a third of the way through her model's nominal lifespan of seventy-eight years. A third, translated to his model, was over thirty-six thousand vorn, which was longer than he'd been aware. Like most of his brothers-in-arms, Bumblebee refused to count the time in stasis after the wreck of the Ark on Earth. Only Ironhide and Wheeljack insisted on including that down-time in their ages, for reasons he never cared to fathom.

_And she's a creator, herself,_ he remembered, fondly reviewing pictures of her and her family he'd downloaded from her Photobucket account. _Byron is a sparkling, even by human standards,_ he reasoned, lingering on the image of Mitzi with her five-year-old son. _If she wants others, this won't last long,_ he thought, _with her hard-wired taboos against having more than one lover at a time._ It saddened him briefly, _but even if we interact the rest of her life, and she lives longer than most humans..._ He promised himself that he'd cherish every moment in her company. _Megatron might get me next time, anyway,_ he thought grimly. _Just because we can extend our lives indefinitely, doesn't make us immortal._

He realized he'd been speeding. He was nearly to the exit for the Sequoia National Forest when he registered it: the calculated time for the trip was thirteen hours and he was only a few miles out at the twelve-hour mark. There was still daylight left when he was supposed to arrive at dusk so the other campers might not notice or report a vehicle out of place. He slowed down to precisely the speed limit, and farther, and dropped into the right lane, only to realize he was still gaining on the rig a few hundred feet ahead. Bumblebee let the raised pick-up in the left lane overtake him and slipped in behind it to pass.

He noticed the pick-up had something dangling from it precariously. He trained visual sensors on it from a normal following distance and was alarmed to find the something appeared to be the reproductive organs of a male biological, similar to a bovine or equine. His best invasive scans showed that the truck was just a truck, yet his optics saw the organs, _testicles_, of a mammal. _Definitely mammalian._ He was fascinated, and he was disturbed. _I didn't know their technology was already so advanced._ While he poured through his databanks, looking for anything he might have picked up about successful human hybridization of their biological beasts of burden with mechanical vehicles, an awful thing happened: the semi they were passing blew a tire. The semi itself was unaffected because the tire was not on a driving or a steering wheel of the tractor, and the trailer was not heavily laden. It was a recycled and reconditioned tire, one truckers call a "retread", so the treaded part came off in a long continuous piece and was whipped out into the passing lane by the wheel behind it, right into the path of both the pick-up truck-animal thing and Bumblebee. The driver of the pick-up managed to cut the wheel back and forth in such a way that the rubber didn't impact the side of the vehicle and was straddled in the middle of the lane. To Bumblebee's horror, the tire-turned-debris struck the pick-up truck creature sharply and tore the poor thing's flesh, removing the organ. All Bumblebee could do was swerve to avoid hitting both, and in his desperation to avoid crushing the truck-creature's testes the blown retread struck his own undercarriage painfully.

He pulled over to the median to recover and try to figure out how to help the truck-creature without transforming. He watched, aghast, as the driver of the pick-up truck continued on, oblivious to the injury inflicted on his beast. _That human's bad as a Decepticon,_ he thought morbidly. Still, his own injury wasn't anything that would require help, and he thought he could wait until traffic died down a bit then back up quickly and scoop up the lost body part that had come to rest against a reflective lane divider. _Maybe it can be reattached,_ he thought. There was a long break in traffic approaching, after a J.B. Hunt tractor-trailer. His scans proved the composition of the lost part was organic, a complex hydrocarbon, more solid than the flesh of other mammals he'd noticed, but _That's some sort of mechanized creature,_ he thought, so its - _his_ - make-up was bound to be different from natural creatures. Recording the license plate of the F-150, California SKMYBLS, so he could return the poor creature's part, he prepared to make his dash across the lanes.

The driver of the J.B. Hunt rig changed lanes at precisely the wrong time and rolled over the truck-creature's testes.

Bumblebee was horrified.

He sat there at the side of the road, processor functions on hold, pumps cycling fast.

The lost part was a purplish-blue patch of hydrocarbons on the pavement.

He nearly expelled the energon he'd taken in before departing the Ark.

Shaken to his spark by the heartlessness of the human drivers - _The owner never even pulled over to check on his animal! The poor thing just had to keep running! And the other- just rolled over it- didn't even notice._ Bumblebee sat for a few breems. His holding tank stopped sloshing so violently; he slowly got back onto the road and followed the rest of the directions Mitzi had sent him.

The delay left him only about twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Mitzi was already waiting for him in her car. She got out and stood beside her Mustang as he pulled in beside it. She was smiling, and _more_ than he remembered, more than the pictures he had did her justice. He was suddenly stiflingly aware of the fact that they'd only met in person once before.

He was so happy to see her, and so disturbed by what he'd witnessed, that he almost forgot about the possibility of watchers. He nearly transformed right there beside her in the parking area.

"Hey there, Bumblebee," she said slowly, and trailed her fingers over his front fender as she walked to the passenger's side door. As if she knew he was about to do something stupid, she reminded him of the plan: "I pitched the tent at the farthest campsite."

Before she could touch the door handle, he opened it gently, earlier distress temporarily forgotten.

"Quite the gentleman, aren't you?" she asked. She paused to look at his roof, tracing the near edge of his hidden Autobot insignia with the tip of her index finger before turning her body to get in.

Bumblebee thought he recognized it as a rhetorical question, until she hesitated to get in and sit down. "I don't know how to answer that, Mitzi. But it's very good to see you."

She laughed and seemed to relax: the tension left her hands where they gripped the door frame and his roofline. She was looking at his dashboard and interior. "It's good to see you, too. It's just- I-" she closed her eyes and dropped her head, "Honey, it's weird to think I'm going to sit _in_ you. Like I've sat in any number of passenger seats in my life."

Bumblebee chuckled and let the sound travel in his plating to her fingers. She looked up at that, but couldn't seem to find a place to rest her eyes. "You're welcome to the driver's seat if you want, but..." he approximated a shrug on his suspension, "Have you ever been carried by another human?" _The intimacy and care of that ought to be universal,_ he thought.

She nodded, assuming correctly that he could see her.

"Think of it just like that. Only-" he stopped, nervous about confirming what suddenly struck him as a possible reason for her hesitance.

"What, 'Bee? 'Only' what?" She unconsciously moved her hands back and forth along the door and window frames as if feeling the texture of the finish and the seal.

He reflexively twitched the door away from her hand, "That tickles!" But he admitted his train of thought: "Only, in this mode, I get to touch more of you at once."

She laughed, and plunked herself decisively in the passenger seat. "Fine. I was worried about sitting on something sensitive." Her hand was on the door pull, but it closed of his impulse.

"You are, but-" he wondered if he were somehow in dangerous territory but started slowly forward over the dirt track to the campsites, "is that a bad thing?"

She patted his dashboard and ghosted her other hand over the edge of the steering wheel and gear shift, "If it's okay with you, it's okay with me."

"It's definitely okay with me," he said, and surprised her by fluidly slipping the seat belt across her hips.

"I can handle this," she said, nodding. Bumblebee liked what that movement caused in the rest of her body as she rested against his seat. "Seriously, I think all I need to get comfortable with this- _-arrangement_," he heard the smirk in her voice before he registered the subtle change in the expression on her face, "is to know where to look when I talk to you. My momma taught me to make eye contact, and the older I get the more I need it."

He thought for a moment about the logistics of his interior and his various optical sensors. "The simplest way," he started, then realized he had passed the last of the campsites in the row, "Mitzi, have I missed your camp?" He slowed down further, barely crawling along the path. With his headlights and variety of sensors, he wasn't terribly concerned for his own sake in the dark, but Mitzi simply would not be able to see much outside in a few minutes.

She looked around them, and shook her head again, "No, we've got a ways to go. When I said I got the farthest campsite, I meant the absolute farthest, the last point in the park designated as still within the camp area. Technically," she searched his dashboard, and he understood she was seeking optics out of habit, "no one's supposed to have a car out this far except the Rangers."

"I hope I don't get _you_ in trouble," he said. He noticed the texture of the path change as it became steadily more grassy and less bare dirt and pebbles. Back to their other conversation, "Would you be satisfied by my optical sensors in the rearview mirror? They're wide-angle, but a big part of how I see in this mode."

Her eyes immediately snapped to that mirror. She reached up as if to move it, but stopped herself, dropping her hands back to the dashboard. Looking closely, trying to see past the mirrored surface, she moved her whole body subtly. She squinted her eyes a little, "You see through the mirrors?" She looked briefly at both outside mirrors, but returned to the central one.

"Yeah, and in other ways, too. I like how you look in infrared, and you reflect a lot of UV. It's a neat effect, but I don't know how to explain it to you. You don't have analogs to those sensors." That was one of the less fun aspects of their differences. He changed the subject: "Are you comfortable, thermally? I can warm the seat if you like, or draw heat away faster." Much more potential in exploring that difference, he thought.

Mitzi seemed to agree: her facial expression relaxed into a knowing sort of smile. She shifted purposely, settling down farther into the seat. "I'm good, thanks. Still seems weird, to be sitting on part of you, have my feet on part of you, be _in_ you. It's- I don't know." She looked out again, "There." She pointed ahead, "That family-size tent, that's mine."

As he pulled up to it, she changed the topic completely: "How are you, 'Bee? Six months without getting out of the house except for work would make me _crazy_. And how was the drive? Does a long drive like that make you tired?" she referred to his thirteen-hour stretch, "Or, is that even a long way to you?"

He rolled to a stop, the image of that poor truck creature at the fore of his mind again. She unbuckled herself, opened the door and hopped out, then looked at him expectantly.

"Oh Mitzi it was awful, I saw-" but how did he describe what he saw? How describe the sense of empathy he had for the truck-thing. What was it, anyway?

Concerned, she held out a hand, palm up, inviting something. When he didn't speak or move, she prompted him, "I'm sorry you got in trouble 'cause of me." She mistook which question he was answering.

Bumblebee spoke as he transformed. "Don't be! That, the six months, it wasn't bad at all. I-" bipedal, he set his hand over hers, which seemed to be what she meant for him to do. "Today, I saw-" _What are the words for what I saw?_

He started to try to tell her what happened as she hugged him. "This truck on the highway, it-" he paused to process the technical biological words into ones he was confident she would understand clearly as an engineer, not a medical or veterinary professional.

She moved to step away from him, touching his cheek as she did so. "Let's sit down in the tent and you can tell me all about it, okay?"

He dimmed his optics in agreement, then remembered that she had no way to know what that gesture meant, so he nodded too, as humans did. She knelt to unzip the tent, explaining, "I got the only one at the sporting goods store," finished with the bottom, she slowly stood up as she unzipped the right side, "with a door big enough to drive through, just in case there were people around." She reached across the door flap, fully opening up the tent. She stepped inside and again offered him her hand.

He took it gently in one of his and stepped as lightly as he could into the cloth enclosure. Trying to shake the ill-feeling from seeing the truck-creature mutilated (further?), he attempted a romantic gesture he'd seen in human media - _Didn't all the men who met Inara in polite company kiss her hand?_ - he held her hand as if it were sculpted crystal and drew the back of it to his lip components.

She smiled up at him knowingly, and he wondered if he were in trouble. "We'll get to that, Honey, I promise, but something shook you up." Holding tightly the hand that held hers, she zipped them into the tent, making it just a little darker inside than out with window flaps open on either side wall. She left the bottom of the flap loose. She stepped into him, and released his hand to pet the sides of his face, down to his neck, and rocked up on her toes to kiss him hello.

Optics off, _How did you get me all off-balance?_ cycled through his processor, between the passing horror on the highway and the promise of reliving his memory of their first meeting.

She drew away a fraction. "Definitely not latex," she breathed against his mouth, so he knew she was actively remembering their first kiss, too. He powered his optics, then dimmed them as far as they would go without turning off when he realized they were bright enough to light up everything in the tent at their nominal setting.

Mitzi shook her head, and he wondered if he had done something weird, or something inappropriate. Before he could ask, she said, "I didn't remember that clearly. Wow. Talk about bright blue eyes." She touched his optic ridge, and trailed her fingers down either side of his face as she spoke, "My weakness, blondes with big blue eyes." She paused, then, "When it gets cool enough to close the flaps, I want you to show me how bright your eyes can get," she sighed, with a tone he couldn't read, "but you're right to tone it down." She sat on her sleeping bag, stretched on the floor against one side wall of the tent.

He remained where he was, watching her.

"You're still thinking about it, aren't you, Bumblebee?" she asked, looking up at him. "You don't have to tell me about it if you don't want to, but-" she lay down on her side, facing him, "we've got a few days, and you may not be tired, but I am, and it'll probably help you to talk about it?" In tone, it sounded like a question, but the words didn't, so he didn't answer, just processed her words and his own thoughts. "'Bee?" She seemed very concerned that he remained silent, just looking down at her. "Bumblebee, what happened? Did one of the Decepticons attack you or something?" That possibility seemed to upset her, and she started to sit back up. "Could they have tracked you here?"

He sat a little abruptly, careful not to tear the floor of the tent with his feet. "Nothing like that," he answered, cycling cooling air to try to combat the increased rates of his other systems. He sat with his legs folded up under him, in the way that was comfortable for his model. He felt like he took up the majority of the floor of the tent. _Am I really so much bigger than you are?_ passed randomly through his processor, _I'm only a fraction of a meter taller._ Flat-footed, he was just over eight inches taller than Mitzi's five-foot-eleven-inch height. But seated with her legs folded before her, _Indian style_, he thought he'd heard it called, he estimated that he took up nearly twenty-five percent of the floor space of the tent where she occupied less than ten percent. _I do out-weigh you by-_ he did the math, which he hadn't before, _-twenty times._

It wasn't enough distraction. One of his pumps whined, and he briefly felt embarrassed by that involuntary expression of distress. Being unfamiliar with his bodily functions, Mitzi had to interpret it within her own experience, and seemed to reach the right conclusion. She looked worried for him, and shifted to her knees to shuffle off of her sleeping bag and closer to him.

Mitzi was very tactile, and reached out to him as he told her, haltingly, what he saw. He off-lined his optics, so he didn't have to see his horror transfer to her. _Why am I telling you this?_ he thought, noting that she squeezed his fingers reassuringly. _You're an engineer, you might know something about the hybrid,_ he reasoned, _and you deserve to know what's being done on your own planet._ At the point in the story where the tire tore the creature's flesh, she drew in air sharply and made a choked sound.

He didn't know it, but she was trying desperately not to laugh.

Bumblebee thought he was upsetting her, but kept talking, and quickly, clinically, came to the end of the account, with the smear on the pavement. Mitzi was making little gasping sounds, and he could feel her shake violently.

He on-lined his optics when she reclaimed her right hand, recriminating himself for laying such an awful story on her. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"

Mitzi cut him off with a hand motion, then confirmed the worst by reaching up to wipe a tear from her cheek. He didn't understand what he saw: a human would have seen she was laughing so hard she cried. She was breathing hard. He imagined she was having trouble with her cooling system, as he did with his when he was upset. Her face was contorted so that it almost looked to him as if she were laughing, if she hadn't had tears in her eyes. He reached out to her again, and gently pulled her the rest of the way into his personal space. She cooperated.

"No, I am sorry, I- I should have kept my vocalizer still, I've upset you-"

Gasping, she got up on her knees on his thighs and pulled herself up straight against him to hug his head to her chest and plant a trembling kiss on top of his helmet between his horns. "Oh, 'Bee, no, it's good you told me what happened. Sshhh." She stroked the back of his helm and neck in a way he knew was meant to comfort. He held her around the waist and hips, and she leaned back against his arms to look down into his optics. "Honey, Sweetness, you poor thing," she kissed him between his optics, smiling gently. "That pick-up truck was just a pick-up truck, with a _le-se pi-gu_ for an owner."

He started to vocalize to protest and she shushed him. "No, 'Bee, trust me. That- that-" she shook her head, smiling tightly as she decided on the right word to use, "that appendage was just an affectation, a plastic piece of garbage," she enunciated especially clearly for emphasis, "hung on the frame of a perfectly good truck. A normal truck. Tell me again, what you said the license plate was?"

Bumblebee wanted to believe her, but didn't understand the significance of the license plate. "Ess-kay-em-wye-bee-ell-ess. But I don't think it's related."

Mitzi laughed, and kissed the bridge of his nose, then looked him straight in the eye from so close to his face he could feel her breath across his chin. "That's 'cause you aren't as familiar with men as you think you are. Honey, that is a custom plate, I know 'cause it's too much for coincidence. The jerkwad driving the truck hung plastic testicles from the belly of the thing and ordered a plate that reads 'suck my balls'. He's an asshole. The truck is just a truck. It was jacked up on its suspension, right?"

Bumblebee could not imagine why a person would want to pretend his vehicle was really an animal under its plating, why the phrase 'suck my balls' would be familiar enough for Mitzi to read it in those letters and be so certain it was a vanity plate, or why the scenario as Mitzi understood it added up to an unpleasant entity behind the wheel. _At least I was right about that part,_ he thought, having thought the worst of the driver for his treatment of the damaged truck-animal. He nodded, and wondered how Mitzi guessed the truck rode at least ten inches higher off the ground than it was meant to.

She ran her hands over his shoulders, a satisfied look on her face. "He's - the driver-owner person is - compensating for his own short-comings. Figure the higher the truck's jacked up, the smaller the driver's _endowment_." She put emphasis on that last word, with a raised eyebrow and a smirk.

Bumblebee tried to look like he understood, dimming his optics a tick. He suspected she was not referring to an interest-bearing monetary account.

She continued, "Think of it as his way of telling the rest of us not to bother to talk to him."

There were several things in her explanation that eluded him, but Mitzi massaged the plating of his shoulders and moved against him in ways he had only imagined for six months. She seemed to remember their first meeting as well as he did, gently working her hands into his shoulder seams and stimulating the sensors and circuits, distracting him from his earlier distress and any confusion from her assessment of the cause.

He moved his hands gently against her body, too. He enjoyed the different textures of her: denim pants with soft fuzzy frayed edges, smooth satiny polyester shirt, smoother skin, and her hair that was somehow soft and stiff at once. It was just short enough that he wasn't worried about getting his fingers caught in it, although he had to be careful not to allow individual strands to get trapped in the workings of his knuckles. He ran one hand through it as delicately as he could, fascinated.

She moved her cheek against his appreciatively. "Mmmh. That feels nice, 'Bee. But I really am pretty tired. Let's just rest tonight, okay?"

"Okay," he answered, continuing to pet the back of her head, still amazed that his improbable memory was true. _I know this body, and it goes with the mind I know from the internet. Amazing._

Just as he moved to kiss her, the movement of her hands within his shoulders changed: the one in his left shoulder stilled and the one in his right shoulder started making sampling motions, as near as he could tell. Touching some of his internals almost timidly, then backing off; he could sense her rubbing her fingers together.

"Are you okay?" Mitzi asked suddenly, voice rising a few notes in concern.

"Yeah, I'm fine, why?" he asked, connecting her question to the movement of her hand, "What do you feel in my shoulder?"

She withdrew both hands, careful with her left to touch as little as possible on the way out. "I think you're bleeding, 'Bee." He supported her as much as she would allow as she stood up. "Feels like transmission fluid," she continued, reaching with her right hand for a lantern from the end of her pallet on the floor. Turning it on, they could see her fingers had a pinkish cast on them. She smelled it, continuing to rub her thumb against the first three fingers of her left hand. She held them out to him, "What is this, Bumblebee? This can't be good."

He shrugged a shoulder, wanting to be dismissive, but feeling a little worried, himself. "It's energon. Not the raw stuff we store for long periods and take in as fuel, but the hydraulic version I produce from it in one of my processors. When the blown tire hit me, it must have weakened a line, or cracked it, and when I transformed, the stress made it start leaking. It's not a big deal." He had no internal alarms going off, although he could pinpoint the circuit the leak was in by the slightly lower pressure of the system.

"Will it stop on its own?" she asked, wiping her fingers off on a paper towel from the roll she'd left on the cooler at the rear of the tent. All business, she seemed now, body language very like Wheeljack when he assisted Ratchet.

"I- maybe-," he wanted it to, but, "no, I don't think it will. It's a pressurized system." He wouldn't bleed out, but realistically, he was a twelve-hour drive - _thirteen, if I stick to the speed limits_ - from the Ark and real medical attention. "I'm sorry, Mitzi. I should get back and have it seen to."

"It's on your undercarriage when you're a Volkswagen, right?"

Bumblebee dimmed his optics in affirmation.

He forgot to nod, but she seemed to understand the Cybertronian gesture. "Could I wrap it up, make a bandage, a patch, out of duct tape and a hose clamp to hold the pressure? I have a tool box in my car; I may not be Kaylee, but I'm not useless." She was thinking, looking out the window over his shoulder toward something outside. "Is that selfish? I can do first aid on people- other people- humans," not to leave him out of the former group, he guessed, "-and I tinker with Sally," she named her Mustang, "all the time. I just," she looked back at his optics, then down at her feet, "I don't want you to have to leave so soon."

Impulsively, he reached out to her again, getting up on his knees as he did so, such that he could rest his head on her shoulder if he wanted. He looked up at her. "I don't want to leave, either. Can you patch me up? Just be careful not to let any glue mix in with my energon. Tape may not be a good idea."

She was hugging him lightly in return, and stroked the back of his helm. "Don't worry, Honey, I'll fix ya right up." She kissed him soundly before disengaging. "You wait here, I'll just run down to my car and be back in a shake."

He let go of her and stood up as she unzipped the tent flap. "I'm going with you."

In the light of the lantern, he could see she almost protested immediately, but thought a moment. "It does freak me out a little, to have to walk past all the other campsites by myself after dark," she admitted, "but if you go with me, we still have to walk past all the other campsites." She retrieved a flashlight from her backpack, which he hadn't noticed behind the cooler, and turned off the little electric lantern.

"We can drive past all the other campsites if you'd rather," he offered.

"Only park rangers are supposed to be driving past the campsites," she countered, thoughtfully, returning to the tent flap.

Bumblebee wondered what she wasn't saying. "Right, so won't the other campers assume we're park rangers driving by, and be quiet when they hear us?"

"Yeah, I guess so," she said, expression lightening. "All the druggies and thugs and rapists go on their best behavior for the rangers."

Bumblebee shook his head at her, and took the tent flap from her to wave her through to the outside. "You have such a high estimation of your fellow humans. Druggies, thugs, and rapists on the campground, a _le-se pi-gu_ on the road," he stopped because she snickered at him as she exited the tent. "What?" he said as he followed her out.

"You. I'm just callin' it like I see it, Honey-'Bee."

He dropped the tent flap. "Why would such a 'jerkwad', as you called him, invite the world to suck his balls?" He transformed carefully, and felt the energon seep along the abused line.

Mitzi was already answering him, but instead of getting in, she went down on her hands and knees beside him. She had watched him closely as he transformed, trying to follow where his right shoulder went in the process. "It's a version of 'fuck you', really," she said matter-of-factly. He was impressed: she was close to the damaged line. She rolled over on her back and aimed the light up at his undercarriage. "You understand that curse, right?" She felt gently over the lines she could reach, holding the light in one hand and exploring the area with the other. He rose up a few inches on his suspension, to give her better access.

"Yeah, we say 'frag you' or 'slag you' with the same intent, although they have no connotations of sex." She was getting farther away from the cracked line, "Go back the other way, you were closer where you started looking."

"Thanks." She moved as he suggested. "I see it, I saw it drip. It's not a fast leak, at least." Her voice held relief. She touched the line; the sensor wire on it was unbroken and registered her gentle fingers as pleasant as easily as it had felt the bite of the tire-strike. "'Connotations of sex', huh? Most slang in English has something to do with sex, especially the negative or derisive talk." She felt all around the line, and it seemed to him that she dried the area with her paper towel. His audio sensors confirmed the sound of the paper in her hand.

"How bad is it, really?" he asked, referring to his injury.

"I don't think it's bad, Honey." She wiggled out from under him and stood up, brushing herself off. "I'm gonna get chigger bites from laying in the grass," she lamented, "but you're worth it."

Most of that made no sense, but the last did. "Thank you," he said, and opened the passenger door for her.

She patted her hips and thighs almost comically, as if she were looking for something. "Just a sec, 'Bee, I gotta get my keys." She ducked back into the tent.

Bumblebee scanned the area, remembering her comment about thugs and rapists. There wasn't an animal bigger than a grasshopper within fifty feet of their tent, and no human energy signatures within his range at all. _Wish I could read as far as the other campsites,_ he thought. _Decepticons don't own a patent on thuggery,_ he tried the human words out. _It's another universal concept._

Then she was coming back out of the tent. "Got 'em," she offered, zipping the tent flap completely closed before hopping in.

"You left the lantern on in the tent," he told her, as she moved to close his door, "did you mean to?"

"Yeah, 'Bee, I did. Hope anyone who happens by will assume we're in there. Let's go." They moved together to fasten her seat belt.

"Right." He rolled slowly over the grassy path, as it made the transition to bare earth and fine gravel. "Back to what you were saying before, Mitzi. Don't," he was about to pry into a lot of tribal taboos, he knew, but she'd let him do that before - _Our whole relationship breaks taboos!_ he thought. "Don't humans in general, well, _like_ sex? Why is it associated with everything negative?"

"Well, yeah, Honey, most people like sex, enjoy sex, at least to some extent. But, well," she hesitated, looking out the windshield, then directly into his rearview mirror. She could only see the outline of his driver-side door post, he estimated, but she trusted his optical sensors were behind that darkened mirror. "The short answer has to be 'men'. Really. Men enjoy sex to the point of doing sexual things to please themselves with- well, _anything_." He felt more than saw her shrug. "I guess women are guilty of that, too, but- we approach it completely differently. We can almost become emotionally attached to a _vibrator_, 'Bee. It's part of our hard-wiring, I guess. Men, though, for most of them - I won't say all, though I'm tempted to - it's um- don't take this the wrong way, okay? For a lot of them, sex is purely mechanical. Pleasure for the body. To be taken, literally taken, stolen, begged or bought. They devalue it at every turn I think precisely because it is so _emotional_ for women, and for men perceived as weaker, and it can be so life-affecting." She was watching the road, too: "I think this is our turn, on the left." Then, "Does that make sense to you, 'Bee? It's not something we think about or talk about much, either."

He agreed that it was the right place to turn, and did so, turning up the output of his headlights to resemble high-beams so he could illuminate Mitzi's Mustang from as far away as possible. At least two cars in the parking lot had occupants who hid when his lights touched their car windows. "I think I do understand. It's actually how we Autobots perceive a lot of the Decepticons. We have known Decepticons to rape prisoners. We have that concept, just as you do. There are horror stories. From both factions, unfortunately. There are members of my unit here, even, whom the rest of us think might be emotionally lacking, who seem to _enjoy_ physical intimacy without _appreciating_ it. Isn't that what you mean?" He pulled up beside her car, opposite to how he had earlier. She moved to unbuckle. "Wait a tick, Mitzi. Let me pull around so we see all sides of your car." Her comment about thugs and rapists nagged him. _I might feel better if she spent the night in my passenger compartment,_ he thought.

Visual inspection and his particular scans showed no one had been near her car, and no one paying them any mind, so he stopped with his passenger side near the Mustang's trunk. "Wanna grab your tool box and head back to the tent?" he asked. _I could sit in the light of your car's headlights, but that doesn't strike me as the best idea. We'd draw attention for sure._

Mitzi hopped out, being much more gentle with his door than he'd seen her be with her car's. "Yeah, 'Bee, I think that's our best bet. Rangers and campers," she had the trunk open and paused as she verified the contents of her toolbox, throwing something else from the trunk into it, "come through here all the time." She hefted it, needing both hands. "Pop the trunk, please," she made a head-motion toward his front end.

_Of course she knows my alt-mode's a mid-engine car!_ he thought approvingly, obligingly opening his trunk. He remembered not to engage his subspace compartment.

Mitzi placed the heavy box in his trunk as softly as she could, given the level of effort required for her to manage its mass and bulk with its relatively tiny handle. "Okay," she huffed out, "it's not too heavy for you, is it?"

He laughed. "It's fine, no problem at all. I generally carry a lot more weight than that in that compartment."

She closed the Mustang's trunk as he closed his own, then she hopped back in, this time on his driver's side, and they drove back to their tent.

Mitzi convinced him to roll into the shelter after she unzipped it. The zippers just grazed his mirrors. As a Beetle, his tires were inches from her sleeping bag when he rolled into the middle of the well-lit tent. She zipped the door completely closed, and rolled the window flaps down. "Now," she said, tapping lightly on the side of his storage compartment, "let me patch you up before you change back to yourself." He rolled back and let the cover pop up, pleased that she had no problem with his alt-mode, that she recognized it as the farce it was, not his true self at all. She caught it and lifted it the rest of the way with him. Then she pushed the cooler aside - Bumblebee had pressed it against the rear wall of the tent when he'd pulled in and released it when he backed those few inches after she zipped the tent closed behind him. Now she could stand in front of him, while he held open his trunk, and she removed her tool box. It was awkward for her, but she did it without hitting him with it.

Bumblebee was impressed. He said so.

"Ah," she grunted a little with the effort to set it down gently, and not on her own feet. "It's nothin'. I packed the thing," she caught her breath: the tool box mass was nearly a quarter of hers. "I gotta be able to handle it." She knelt down there beside him to open it up and spread out the things she thought she needed; her sleeping bag happened to be on his driver's side, so she was setting up shop on the empty half of the tent floor. She grabbed the roll of paper towels from the top of the cooler, breathing a little harder than he thought she should have been.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

She took a deep breath, and stretched her arms out in front of her before sitting down on the floor. "Yeah, I'm okay Honey, just tired," she unrolled several paper towels and tore them off in a piece, "It's just been a really long day for me, with the drive up here," she folded the paper towels over so they were doubled-up, "and setting up the tent by myself," she laid them under him, and crouched down so she could see that they were under the broken line, a make-shift drop-cloth, "I had to make a lot of trips from the car down here, and it's catchin' up to me." She started to repeat the process with the paper towels.

"It can wait until tomorrow, really," he offered, assessing. "If I were by myself, I'd have to head back to the Ark immediately, to have it seen to, because I'm so far away and it's exposed during the drive. But, you're here, and you're able to patch me up-"

She cut him off, a bit sharply. "No way." She frowned; he could see her expression clearly in his passenger side mirror. She sighed, pulling up the first drop-cloth. She wadded it up and wiped the floor with it; he could see it was stained liberally with energon. He was leaking more than he thought his pressure sensor indicated. She laid the new one down, and then turned her head to look into that mirror. "I'm sorry, Honey, but you don't see this down here." She held the soiled paper towels up where she thought his sensors behind the mirror might see them. "See? You're losing more energon than you let on. Don't be stoic with me, okay?" Another chest-filling deep breath, followed by another full sigh. "I'm an Oldest Child, 'Bee, and I'm a Mommy," he could hear capital letters, "so I'm a care-taker, a problem-solver. I'm an engineer by personality first, education second." Her expression softened again, and she rested her right hand against his door panel, then her forehead joined it. "I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna sleep 'til about noon tomorrow, unless it gets too hot to sleep."

"I'm sorry, Mitzi," he wanted to transform and wrap her up in a hug, this entity he had gotten to know very well over the last months, trading emails and instant messages and phone calls. "This hasn't been much of a vacation for you so far."

He felt her smile before he was able to make it out visually. "Yes it has, 'Bee. Yes, it has." She rocked away from his side and lay flat on her back on the tent fabric. She was small enough to fit her head and shoulders comfortably under him if he raised himself as far as he could on his suspension. "Driving up to Sally and back must've made it worse."

"Is it dripping a lot more?"

"Yeah," he felt her shift, "you left a trail inside the tent, so probably outside for a ways, too. Will this stuff dissipate by morning, do you think?"

He approximated a shrug. "It'll break down and look more like something out of a human automobile in a few hours," he explained, "but after that, it'll behave similarly to silicon brake fluid."

She sighed tiredly. Then she yawned. "O-kay. I'll worry about that after we're finished here." Her voice was resigned. She had finished her inspection of the injury and scooted back out from under him. "I'm amazed at how clean you are," she said, as if to herself, as she unrolled a few inches of duct tape and cut it with a utility knife from the tool box.

"Be careful-" Bumblebee began when he saw that.

"-with the glue," they finished together. Mitzi continued, "I remember, Honey. Trust me. I'm treating you the same way I'd treat Byron, none of the sticky will be near the wound, okay?"

Feeling a little sheepish but with no faceplates exposed to show it, no lit optics to dim or head to nod, he had to vocalize a weak, "Okay."

"See, here's what I've got for you," she held a piece of paper towel out to him that she had cut down to about a quarter-sheet. "If I fold it up like this," she folded it over twice to make a four-ply piece, a few centimeters wide by about ten long, then she folded it in half the long way, for eight thicknesses in a shorter rectangle, "the crack runs all the way around the line, now, but it only takes up about half an inch," she held up her right hand in front of the mirror for him, thumb and forefinger held about a centimeter apart, "of the length of the line. So," she did something on the floor that he couldn't see, then held up the duct tape with the rectangle of paper stuck on it, cross-wise and hanging a little off one side, "I can put this on so that only paper contacts the crack but the duct tape holds it in place while it soaks up with energon and I get hose clamps," she held up two little pieces of metal similar to items he'd seen Ratchet use in triage, "on it to make sure it doesn't come off when you transform. Since the wire that runs along the line didn't break, I don't think the movement is that drastic, so I'd like to reinforce the area - like splinting a broken bone - with this," she held up a piece of stiff wire so he could see it, "little bit of farmer's friend." She shrugged, and looked at the mirror as if she could see his optical sensors behind it, "That's what my Dad called it, anyway. Low-tech, but it's the best I can do for you, and," she hesitated, and looked away a moment, then back at the mirror, "I've been looking forward to spending time with you, in person. I know you're not in danger from the injury, but it upsets me that that tire hit you and hurt you because of that hayseed on the freeway." Her volume dropped, and she looked back down at the patch and hardware she had prepared. "I'm mad at him."

"I'm-" Bumblebee didn't know what to say, but felt that he really should say something. "I'm flattered- honored that you set importance on this time we have, but it's not his fault, Mitzi, it's my own."

"No," she dismissed that thought, laying back down on her back to scoot under his frame and get to work, "it is not your fault: you interpreted what you saw under the best light you could, in your own experience, because you are such a sweet-heart, and still figured the driver of that truck was a jerk. You just thought he was an uncaring jerk who not only drove an abomination, but made the poor thing keep running at seventy miles-per-hour injured when what he is, is an uncaring jerk, who thinks his own entertainment is much more important than grossing out the rest of us. I guarantee you, 'Bee," she paused, and he could tell she had wrapped up the break completely because he could feel the slight pressure the tape put on the sensor wire, and the pressure-drop in the cracked line diminished, "that not even the guy who hung those balls on that truck thinks they're in any way attractive, aesthetically pleasing, meaningful. Nothing. He just did it," she clicked the open hose clamps over the line, "to tell the rest of us what he thinks of the world." She started tightening down the first one, on the upstream side of the break.

Bumblebee had no counter to that, he had taken what he saw at face value, and had wanted to give the driver a piece of his mind, but that was secondary to wanting to help the poor truck-animal. _Not an animal at all,_ he reminded himself.

They sat in silence as Mitzi finished up, tightening the hose clamps to a tension that suited her sensibilities.

"Tell me if it's too tight," she began. Then the tip of the screwdriver slipped off the clamp; Mitzi had been exerting enough pressure on the tool to keep it in place that her hand shot forward, contacting the clamp and line.

Bumblebee was startled by the sudden sharp pain that caused and yelped, stiffening a little on his suspension.

"Gorammit," Mitzi cursed softly. Louder, she said, "Honey, are you okay? I'm so sorry." He felt her fingers, a little cold but soft and caring, stroke along the line to try to soothe the hurt.

"It's okay, Mitzi, I'm okay. Is everything still in place?"

She felt all along the patch, gently, and he felt her return to tightening the second clamp, one more turn of the screw only. "You have to tell me if I'm doing more damage, getting it too tight, or if this causes a problem somehow, when you change?" she said as she got back out from underneath him.

"Will do," seemed like the answer she wanted, even though her word choice had not indicated a question. Something that she had done released a trace of oxidized iron into the air, and Bumblebee couldn't imagine what it had to do with the minor repair she'd made.

Mitzi pulled the only slightly energon-soiled towels from under him, and put her screwdriver and the rest of her farmer's friend and duct tape back in the tool box. She stood up. "Well," she asked, looking at him from end to end, "are you gonna try it?"

Careful of the fabric flooring, and careful of her standing so close to him, Bumblebee transformed.

She stepped into him, and rested her left hand on his shoulder plating, under which they both knew her patch now resided. "Did it hold?" She looked up into his optics.

"I think so," he said, resting his hands lightly on her hips, "but I hadn't noticed the leak before you did." He rested his forehead lightly against hers, "Can I impose on you a bit more, to check it the same way you found it?"

"Sure thing, Hon'," she said, and did the strangest thing: she rubbed the tip of her nose against his as she smiled. "But I think you just like to have my hands in there." She raised an eyebrow at him, then sighed, working her left hand once again under his plating. "Checking my handiwork is as far this goes, though," she said, and Bumblebee could see her body language droop a little.

He held very still as she checked out the tubing. She had excellent spatial memory, and found the line quickly, then felt all around the patch and splint. He could tell particularly clearly where the limits of the tape were when she touched them, because her fingers felt less immediate to the sensor area under the tape than bare. The clamps he felt as a comforting increase in pressure on the line. "Thank you," he said seriously.

Mitzi withdrew her hand, and kissed him softly on his upper lip. "Anytime, Honeybee. I couldn't very well let you leak all that sweetness out into the world, now could I?" She patted the side of his face, and stepped out of his embrace. "I have to get some rest. Are you okay with bedding down on the floor of the tent here? You told me not to bother to get you a sleeping bag." She was lifting the tool box again, to move it aside.

"The floor is fine," Bumblebee said, leaning over and picking it up for her easily. "Let me," and, "Where do you want it?" he added.

She pointed to the floor by the cooler, on the side of the tent she seemed to have claimed, and sighed again.

Bumblebee thought it sounded like one of Ratchet's too-many-wounded sighs that he'd picked up from Sparkplug. "How can I help you be comfortable?" he asked.

"I don't suppose you can function as a heater?" she asked, "It's got chilly, to me, since the sun went down." She started the movement to run her right hand through her curls but stopped, as if she had forgotten that hand still held the soiled paper towels. She took the paper in her left hand, and looked closely at the palm of her right, touching it with the tip of her left index finger.

Bumblebee focused in on the place and saw that her skin was damaged, there, and fluid seeped out, welling up slowly. _Red,_ he noted with alarm, remembering the times he'd seen that fluid, _blood,_ from Spike or Sparkplug. Gently, he reached out to cup her injured hand in both of his. "How did this happen?" he asked, immediately calling up all he knew about it, that blood carried energy and oxygen to biological cells analogous to energon, but it also served as a coolant, and was pressurized, low pressure for a hydraulic system.

She dabbed at it with the wadded-up paper towel, adding her own fluid to his there.

Bumblebee found that disturbing, and shifted his focus to watch her face. _She was so good about patching me up,_ he thought, so, "What can I do for you?" he asked.

She pressed the paper towel to her flesh, uncaring that she might be exposing her systems to his energon that was already absorbed into the paper. "'It's too far from my heart to kill me,'" she quipped, "is what my momma would say." She smiled tiredly at him, "And I'm certainly not gonna bleed to death from it, 'Bee," she assured him. She removed her hand from his loose grasp and gestured toward her backpack. "I think I have some disinfectant and band-aids in there. Would you get it for me?" She took a step back and sat herself gracelessly on the sleeping bag.

He brought the pack to her and knelt down, then sat down on the floor to be as close to level with her as possible.

"Go ahead and fish around in there for me, please. The hydrogen peroxide's in a brown plastic bottle and the band-aids are in a zip-lock baggie with a bunch of other stuff."

He did as she asked, the human-ness of the activity striking him: the back-pack was analogous to a subspace compartment in a transformer but even with the extremely personal nature of some of the items in the pack it wasn't nearly as private a storage space as one of his compartments. The zipper bag presented itself quickly, having been placed near the top of the contents of the bag, mostly clothing. He handed it to her, and got back to looking for the brown plastic bottle, locating it at the bottom of the pack. He reached carefully down along one side to pull it out without further disturbing the other contents.

She laid the paper towels on the floor of the tent before her, folded down to less than a fifteen-centimeter square, a clean area on top. She accepted the bottle from him and thanked him, opening the bottle awkwardly, keeping the palm of her right hand, her primary hand, from touching the bottle. She poured a capful of the base and seemed at a loss for a tick as to what to do with the open bottle before holding it out to him. He took it and watched as she pressed the wound to the bottle cap and turned her hand over so that he knew the liquid was in direct contact to her flesh.

"Are you sure," he started to ask but trailed off, sensing her heartbeat speed up slightly and her breathing deepen. It might not have been a change even she noticed, but he did. "That pains you more!"

"Uh-huh," she said, and smiled for him. "It hurts, but I haveta clean it out good, 'Bee. That hose clamp's been in my toolbox for months, and it's not like I washed my hands before starting to work on you - which I probably should have done, thinking about it now. Are you susceptible to infection?"

He could hear the liquid reacting with something, bubbles forming and popping under the cap. It forced liquid out from under it, and he understood the position of the used paper towels, to catch drops as they ran off her hand. He looked back at her face after watching a couple of drops fall, and remembered she'd asked a question. "Yes, but not in the same way you are, not biological bacteria and viruses."

She nodded, and appeared to be counting something, silently moving her lips. "Could you tell me when a solid minute has passed? I think that's enough time to call it clean." He dimmed his optics once, so she continued, "What kind of infections? There isn't any chance I'll've given you one, is there?" She was curious, and genuinely concerned.

"No, I don't think so," he said, "unless you carry cosmic rust somehow."

She thought seriously on that a moment. "I don't think so. That's not an enzyme or a sugar, is it?"

"No, it's a fast-replicating nano-bot."

"Nope, I'm clean then, no nano-bots here. I'm certainly not worried about getting a little energon on me. It may not be the transmission or power steering fluid I'm used to, but it smells enough like them that I'm comfortable."

"Right. I don't think there's anything in energon, even my processed energon, to hurt you. Definitely no microbes, and it's not reactive by itself." Bumblebee's chronometer reached a minute since she asked him to time her process. "Your minute is up."

"Thanks," she said, reversing the actions by which she had flushed her wound: she turned her hand back over so the cap was open-side-up under her palm instead of open-side-down on top of it, and drew the cap away with her left hand, finally pouring the few remaining drops out on the waiting paper. She looked at the injury, curling up her nose.

"What?" he asked, looking as closely at it as seemed appropriate. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, Honey-'Bee, it just burns a little." She handed him the cap, and used her fingernail to pry at a hanging bit of skin. "I gouged out a piece of skin on the loose end of that clamp, and it's sorta hanging there now, see?" She held out her hand for him to inspect.

He understood that he shouldn't touch it, and looked at it then back at her face, dimming his optics a tick.

"Would ya close up that bottle and help me get a band-aid out?" She picked up the zipper bag and opened it by holding one side with her teeth and the other with her left hand.

Bumblebee quickly capped the bottle and reached for the awkwardly-opened bag. "Yeah, let me do that," he said, taking it from her.

She sighed. "Thanks, 'Bee. There should be a big one in there, about an inch wide. I'd like that one if you can find it."

He knew what pre-packaged bandages looked like, from working so often with Spike, and since all of the ones he saw in the bag were greater than an inch in their longest dimension, he knew he was looking for one that was nearly an inch in its secondary dimension. He found two, and held them up for Mitzi, "Is this what you need?" He hadn't gotten the question out before she was nodding. The padded part would cover the wound with a little room to spare. Seeing no difference in them, he dropped one back in the bag and set it down. "Now what?"

"Do you see how to peel it open?"

"Like this?" he said, and demonstrated.

"Yep, good. Now if you don't mind doing it, the thing is made so you can apply the bandage without having to touch the pad." She took the bandage from him and turned it over, white plastic up, before giving it back to him. "If you can pinch that little flap," she indicated with a fingernail, "in one hand and the other little flap," again manipulated with a fingernail so he could see how it would move, "with your other hand, it'll stick right where you put it."

"I don't mind at all," he said, taking her right hand gently and placing it palm-up on his own knee. Then he carefully grasped the little white covers as she directed, and peeled them back far enough to expose the pad. She guided him with her left hand, so the wound would be covered, and he peeled the plastic the rest of the way off, stretching the material down against her skin. "It almost matches," he said, passing his thumb across the pads of her fingers, well away from the injury.

She narrowed her eyes a moment, then relaxed. "Thanks," she said, flexing her hand and watching the behavior of the bandage. She then picked up the little covers he'd removed from the band-aid, and held her right hand out to him, palm-up again, but with a completely different look.

He didn't understand what she wanted.

"Hand me the wrapper, please," she said dully. He found the pieces near his side, forgotten, and handed them to her. "Thanks," she took them, crushing them into a ball in her hand, then wadding them up in the paper towel pad from the floor. She reached for her pack, and he handed it to her so she didn't have to get up. She deftly pulled out a piece of thin plastic, and made a motion like untying a knot, then he could see it was a plastic bag, like the kind he saw drifting over the road and caught in vegetation all the time. She stuffed the now useless bandage wrappers and soiled paper towels into it; he understood it was now a refuse container.

"Let me," he said, and took it from her as he stood, picking up the other discarded paper towels from the floor and stuffing them into the bag.

Her expression was just tired. "Thank you, 'Bee," she sighed. He picked up a bit of duct tape from the tent floor and looked at her for confirmation before adding it to the sack. "Just put it by the door, please."

He did so, and watched as she started to remove her tennis shoes.

He returned to her immediate vicinity and knelt before her, nothing else he'd rather do and nothing clearly needed for him to do. "Are you still cold?" he asked, remembering the conversation they had started earlier. "I can keep you as warm as you like in here." He opened the windows on either side of his torso, those that were in the doors of his alt-mode, and allowed his cooling system to put all the air out past the heater vents and out those window openings. He gently took her left hand that was not actively occupied with her shoes and held it in the flow of warm air. "And I can provide light," he said, turning on his headlights very dimly before turning off the lantern, "as bright as you can stand."

She removed both her shoes and paused. "You mean I don't have to sleep in every stitch of clothing I brought with me if it turns off cold tonight?"

It made him feel appreciated that she sounded so hopeful. "Yeah, you can sleep in whatever makes you happy. You can do anything you like in here," he said, and hoped his meaning was clear, "in any state of dress that makes you happy."

She laughed, and reached for his left hand with her right to squeeze it for answer, shaking her head in a way that looked anything but negative.

Confounded, he decided to admit it this time: "I don't understand. Is it all right that I said that? You shake your head as if to say 'no' but nothing else about your body language is negative at all!"

She shook her head that way again, still smiling and looking very pleased. "You sweet-thing! 'Is it all right?' Yes! Perfect. Better than all right." She squeezed the fingers she'd captured again before letting them go. "But I'm going to sleep in a tee-shirt and shorts just in case someone comes knocking about that trail of fluid leading up to the tent." She rummaged in her back-pack a moment, then stood and quickly changed, nothing in her body-language a bit shy about doing it in front of him. "May I ask, how it is, that you are fascinated and watch me like you do?"

He dimmed his optics, then realized that what she wanted was the answer to the question she had asked permission to field, not the yes-or-no question she had really given voice. She sat back on her pallet in front of him.

He thought a moment. "You are a beautiful being," he began. She huffed a breath at him that sounded a little derisive. "And on top of that," he said emphatically, "you have an aesthetically pleasing form, especially with the way you move when you aren't thinking about it. Grace, symmetry, soft curves, colors like yours, are very ..." he searched his databanks for the word, "welcoming."

She laughed softly, and lay down on top of her bedding. Reaching out a hand to him, she invited him to kiss her good-night, and to get comfortable. He chose to sit with his back to the rear wall of the tent, nearest her head, and hold her hand as she cycled into recharge - _went to sleep,_ he reminded himself of the biological turn of phrase. He turned his lights off, except for his optics, which he left powered low until daylight, when he figured thugs and rapists of any sort would be winding down their activity. _Some concepts are universal,_ he thought, cycling down to recharge fully, _basic meanness and kindness, injury and repair, grace and symmetry..._


End file.
